This article was republished 8 March 2026 for International Women’s Day to highlight the incredible women of Bylines Network
November marks the 50th anniversary of Franco’s death. In my second homeland, Spain, people are debating how to observe this significant date in history.
In the UK, I note that February marked 50 years since Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Conservative Party, a perhaps less notable historical event. There is also another less epoch-making anniversary this year, as I calculate that I have now lived in Spain for a total of 50 years.
Changes in Malaga: from Franco to modern day
The first question a foreign resident in Spain gets asked is usually: “How long have you lived here?” Any answer of 10 years or more almost inevitably brings the response: “You must have seen a lot of changes in that time!” Well. Yes. When I arrived in Spain for the first time, in 1972, Malaga was, rather bizarrely for the capital city of a province, a somewhat run-down dormitory town for the burgeoning Costa del Sol resorts. It had an important airport, but travellers bypassed the city on their way east to Nerja, or west to Torremolinos and Marbella.
Now, the city of Malaga features in lists as one of the most desirable places on earth to visit or live, attracts high-tech investment, and is a major tourist destination in its own right. Millions of visitors come every year in search of sun, culture, gastronomy, a relaxed lifestyle and general joie de vivre, or alegría, as we call it here.
Foreign students enjoyed some freedom under Franco
On that first occasion, I did stay one night in the city, in a cheap pensión next to the bus terminal. I was heading to join the large student population in Granada, where anti-Franco left-wing students were sometimes rounded up and put in vans by los grises, the grey-uniformed police. Most of the female students lived in residences with curfews, but those of us who were foreign and studying Spanish enjoyed our freedom to the full.
One student incurred the wrath of her neighbours by clomping up the stairs to her apartment late at night, in her platform heels and, scandalously, not on her own! The grises were called in and escorted her to the airport, blacklisting her passport in case she tried to return.
Cordoba 1975: in a Spain under tight control
Two years later, in 1975, I was living in Cordoba, waiting for my Spanish boyfriend to finish his military service in the Cerro Muriano camp nearby. Spain under Franco was living in isolation from the rest of Europe. It would be more than 10 years before democratic Spain joined the EU and the regime’s tight control over the population meant that visitors were only allowed to stay for three months. The alternative was either a complicated bureaucratic procedure to obtain a permanencia permit for another three months, or leave the country for a brief spell and come back. Shops in the border towns in Portugal did quite well out of this stratagem.
The media in Spain were state-run, and we were starved for reliable news. In Holy Week the only music on the radio and television was religious. The most progressive magazine, Triunfo, frequently had pages removed by the censors before it got to the kiosks, or failed to turn up at all, in which case the vendor would report that it had been secuestrado (kidnapped).
In November Franco was ill and hadn’t been seen for weeks. Officialdom, and particularly the military, was very much on edge. I had an old British-registered Ford Anglia, the likes of which had never been seen in Cordoba. This caused a major alert one day when my boyfriend left it parked outside the barracks. It was all very dicey.
A portentous announcement Franco is dead: what now for Spain?
On the morning of 20 November 1975 I turned on my transistor radio to hear the momentous and most solemnly pronounced words: “Franco ha muerto“. Franco has died. The family next door, who went into mourning, invited me round to watch the designated new Head of State, King Juan Carlos, address the nation, expressing his desire for harmony, unity, and progress; a desire which it later became clear included steering the country towards democracy. Franco’s government was still in power and many, like my kindly neighbours, expected a continuation of Franco’s politics under the new monarchy. Others, including those in the nearby military camp, prepared for a possible return to civil war. But the week that Franco died, the shops in Cordoba sold out of cava.
Spain in freedom: opinion split over Franco’s legacy
There are those who contend that no death should be a cause for celebration, and plenty still who laud what Franco did for Spain. If social media had existed at the time he died, the memes would have been jokes about Franco inaugurating yet another reservoir, and his praises have been sung retrospectively during the current drought.
The anti-Francoists though, including those I knew in Granada who were chased through the streets by the grises and the Cordobeses who drank the shops dry of cava, are keen to mark the 50th anniversary of Franco’s death, and dozens of events have been organised under the slogan “España en Libertad” (Spain in freedom). It may prudently be called a celebration of the anniversary of the start of the Transition, but it is 50 years since the death of a dictator.
So yes, I have seen changes! Social, moral and legal attitudes have almost completely flipped since 1975, along with the politics. The Transition brought democracy to Spain, and the country can now proudly claim to be one of the most open and progressive societies anywhere, as well as one of the most prosperous.
And … 50 years since Margaret Thatcher erupted into prominence? Well, she definitely made a difference, and like Franco her contribution is still the subject of controversy. But mention of her 50-year anniversary is really to put into context the spectacular and unparalleled changes which have taken place meanwhile in Spain.
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