Franco is still alive, especially in the Balearic Islands

PalmFrancoism did not disappear with the dictator's death. The fact that around fifty names of Francoists remain on the streets of the Balearic Islands is not a worrying legacy. Nor is it—although it is striking enough—that one can still see the occasional yoke and arrows symbol.

The case of the monument—not a 'monolith' as it is often incorrectly called, because it is not a single stone but a brick structure—that still stands in Palma's Plaça de la Feixina is quite different. It proudly insults the victims of the dictatorship and glorifies the memory of 1947, the year the coins were printed with that oft-repeated phrase that so aptly captures the essence of his regime: Leader of Spain by the Grace of GodTheir god, the true one, the one who legitimized illegal violence for the good of eternal Spain against its demonic enemies: democrats and communists. This is the monument. Nothing else. Whose essence is indelible. It didn't change because a handful of Palma councilors said in 2010 that it ceased to be what it was. No. It was and is the pride of the victors of 1939, those with their arms raised in the Roman salute. As if in 2025 they were still marching around it.

Incidentally, the Feixina is also a good symbol of how not to do certain things. As Maria Antònia Oliver, president of Memoria de Mallorca, often says, the left should have demolished the monument without hesitation. And if someone had then taken legal action... the job would have already been done. However, they didn't, and—as Oliver argues and the case seems to demonstrate—when issues of democratic memory go to court, they usually end up like a farce.

The Feixina case, in short, is striking, important, irritating, and shameful. Nor is it the most significant aspect of the Francoist legacy.

Growth of the far right

This is the resurgence, in a Spanish context, of the general phenomenon in the West of the growth of the far right under new guises. Because it has dangerous and perhaps lethal implications for freedom.

In our country, Vox represents this political phenomenon. Vox is not only Francoism because its rise is part of the general trend of all far-right populisms, but Vox is also Francoism because, in part, it feeds on a uniquely Spanish factor: the persistence of a—often false—positive memory of the dictatorship. This is what the now much-criticized sociologist José Félix Tezanos coined as "sociological Francoism," as the Mallorcan political scientist Eli Gallardo often reminds us.

This sociological Francoism can take root much more easily in societies weakened by the centrifugal force of fragmentation than in those strengthened by the centripetal force of unity. In other words: the Balearic Islands are fertile ground for the growth of neo-Francoism in its modern version of the far-right populism represented by Vox.

A unified Balearic social body is nonexistent, which has always weakened us. Furthermore, insularity has killed any possibility of common strength. This was already happening right after the dictator's death, when in 1976 the platforms of democratic dissent met in Barcelona, ​​Madrid... and those from the Islands never had any influence, mainly due to their fundamental disunity, which rendered them incapable of presenting a common voice. Since then, we haven't improved much.

A single Balearic body

To this intrinsic weakness, this reluctance to forge a single, unified Balearic entity, we must now add the massive immigration received over the last 50 years, which has created multiple societies on each island. Disintegration is the norm and makes a single unit impossible. This translates into collective fragility, which has consequences of all kinds. For example, at the ballot box: we shattered abstention records one after another, especially in Ibiza and Palma.

Biology teaches us that weak bodies are prone to potentially lethal illness. The same is true in politics. The multiple societies and identities that coexist on each island weaken the whole, making it highly porous to the penetration of the far right.

It is no surprise that the Balearic positive differential for the Vox vote is around three percentage points above the national average. The weak island identity works in his favor and, at the same time, helps generate the false positive memory that many people have of Francoism. Today, in the Balearic Islands—according to demographer Pere Salvà—25% of the population that lived in 1975, the year of the dictator's death, remains, including natural increase. With such a large population that cannot possibly have any memory of the dictatorship, it should be a distant bad dream. But it isn't. If, nationwide, 20% of the population expresses understanding and sympathy for Francoism, according to the CIS (Spanish Center for Sociological Research), especially among young people, it's not hard to imagine that here—although we don't have specific data—the percentage is considerably higher. This is, by far, the most relevant, painful, dangerous, and consequential legacy of Franco: that 50 years after his death, he is still alive, especially in the Balearic Islands.