When a leftist coalition won Spanish elections in February 1936, General Francisco Franco was packed off to a remote post in the Canary Islands. Though privy to a coup plot brewing among his fellow army officers, he initially hesitated to join, finally becoming convinced following the retaliatory assassination of a conservative politician. On July 18, Franco broadcast a manifesto imploring the military to overthrow the democratically elected government. As army garrisons all across Spain heeded his call, he then secretly flew from the Canary Islands to Spanish-controlled Morocco, where the uprising had begun a day earlier, and took charge of the battle-hardened troops stationed there. (He was able to ferry them across to the Spanish mainland with the help of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.) The coup attempt was only partially successful, leaving Franco’s rebels in control of just one-third of the country and precipitating a bloody civil war that would last three years. In the end, though, he emerged victorious. With the support of fascists, monarchists, the landed gentry and the Catholic Church, “El Caudillo” would rule as dictator of Spain until his death in 1975.
