I Remember Franco

I haven’t been to Spain since June of 1972, and who knows if I will ever get back. I don’t remember every day, or even most of them, but I remember enough. Franco still had a few years left in him. His police regularly raided the University, mostly the Medical School. I attended the Facultad de Filosofia y Letras at the Universidad de Complutense de Madrid. The secret police patrolled the Facudad, not that they were very secret, they were big heavy-set guys with crew cuts, tight shinny suits with the tell-tale bulge under their left arm. I’m not sure if students ever dressed in tight shinny suits but in those days the students in Franco’s Spain had adopted the haute couture of the hippie culture of the times.

Our literary criticism professor, Carlos Bustamente, assigned a student to keep an eye at the door to listen for the heavy footsteps of Franco’s minders. We were young we couldn’t take them very seriously, we only knew of Franco’s crimes from stories – we hadn’t really seen any of it. Most of us were from liberal democracies we thought most the ideas were tame.

I love Spain, I miss it. It was intense, relaxed, happy and sad all rolled up in one. But I remember Franco.

Photo Courtesy of the following site:
www.educared.net