\n In this week’s Inside Spain, we look a how half a century after the death of Francisco Franco, disinformation on social media has credited the Spanish dictator with social achievements that present his iron-fisted rule in a nostalgic light.\n <\/p>\n
Experts warn that misleading comparisons and inaccuracies in viral messages can beguile citizens with minimal understanding of the 1939-1975 period.<\/p>\n
“There is little knowledge of our history,” lamented Jordi Rodriguez Virgili, professor in political communication at the University of Navarre.<\/p>\n
That ignorance, applied to a “very emotional, divisive and polarising” subject such as Franco, cultivates a breeding ground for disinformation, he added.<\/p>\n
So what is the reality of the general’s supposed feats that have fuelled the popularity of the phrase “Life was better under Franco”?<\/p>\n
Reservoirs and dams<\/strong><\/p>\n Many Spaniards attribute the construction of water infrastructure almost exclusively to the dictator.<\/p>\n This information “spreads easily because it is a collective myth about which there is huge ignorance”, said Rodriguez Virgili.<\/p>\n “There is some truth to it — for disinformation that is important. He did not build all the dams,” the expert said.<\/p>\n A General Plan for Irrigation Canals and Reservoirs already existed in the early 20th century, while another dictator, Miguel Primo de Rivera (1923-1930), created water management bodies that still exist today.<\/p>\n Franco also maintained or resumed projects by the short-lived Second Republic that he overthrew in a 1936-1939 civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people.<\/p>\n And history lecturer Matilde Eiroa San Francisco said the creation of some dams and reservoirs during the dictatorship flooded many villages and depended heavily on the labour of political prisoners.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n READ ALSO: Why Spain is destroying dams in the middle of a drought<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Social security<\/strong><\/p>\n Social media users have posted portraits of Franco with the claim that “Spain established a solid social security system in 1942, guaranteeing workers access to healthcare and pensions.”<\/p>\n But not all worker rights, associated with modern social protection models, were bestowed by the dictatorship.<\/p>\n The first incarnations of social protection in Spain date to a 1900 law, said Daniel P\u00e9rez del Prado, secretary general of the Spanish Association of Labour Law and Social Security.<\/p>\n A string of benefits predated Franco: a 1919 pension scheme, an obligatory maternity cover in 1923 and an unemployment payment introduced in 1931.<\/p>\n Different professions progressively created specific protection schemes for their workers.<\/p>\n Under Franco, all the previous existing measures were grouped together under the name “Social Security” in 1963.<\/p>\n Paid holidays were also granted well before the regime, the Second Republic having already established seven days of paid leave per year for workers in 1931.<\/p>\n It was only in 1976 – after Franco’s death – that Spaniards won the right to 21 days of annual paid leave.<\/p>\n