User Reviews

I retired to Spain over four years ago and am very much enjoying living here and even while I struggle to learn the language, I'm also dipping my nose into Spanish literature and history, in particular concerning its recent history taking in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939.

This German-made 5 part documentary (although the final episode is mostly a condensation and recap of the four previous episodes) on the life of the dictator Franco, was naturally of considerable interest to me. I live next door to a Spanish judge in his late 60's and after watching this, now feel much more informed about the subject, which I'm keen, even in my pidgin-Spanish to discuss with him, appreciating that he grew up in those times.

It's incredible to think that this little man, who it's claimed was asexual all his adult life, should not only come from a poor background to rule over his country, but proceed to rule over it with a rod of iron for the next thirty-four years until his death in late 1973. He tried hard to ensure his groomed successor, Prince Juan Carlos would continue his repressive policies after his death but thankfully, the Prince, now King, went his own way and led his country to democracy.

The great question of course is whether Franco can be considered as much a monster as the likes of his contemporaries Hitler, Mussolini or Stalin. This series pulls no punches and doesn't sit on the fence, as it excoriates his memory, accusing him of heinous war-crimes, politico-ethnic cleansing of his left wing rivals, nepotism and just about falling short of proclaiming himself a cult.

Using as much archive video material as possible, combined with commentary by "talking head" experts and imagined artist sketches of important events in his life, I certainly felt I have a greater understanding of the dictator and his times.

Yes, there was an unsurprising predominance lon Germano-Spanish ties, given the source of the series and I didn't always feel I was watching a well-balanced piece which I might have appreciated more, but nevertheless, sometimes bad is just bad and no matter its flaws, this series did certainly convince me that Franco was a force for ill during pretty much all of his "reign" and made me glad that my own parents in particular and myself were grateful to have lived in a democracy over the same time-span . Yes, some loyalists will trot out that old line about the trains always running on time in a dictatorship but I wasn't convinced, not for a second, that there was anything about him that wasn't self-serving.

Y Viva España so the song goes although as I watched this series of programmes, it seemed to me that Spain only really came back to life the minute Franco gave up his own.

I can't really fault this. It details in multiple ways, with relevant video clips (the bane of history documentaries), and with multiple perspectives, the issues of Franco's Spain.

My one fault is silly. Watching English speakers saying stuff, only to be interrupted with German, was a little annoying. But there isn't much of this.

This might be a whole other documentary, but 'The Ramifications of Franco up to today', as it was so recent, could have been fitted in, but then, when would a history ever end. The end of this more than adequately covers the issue.

And, yes, the 'fifth episode' on Netflix is just the previous four cut down to one, for the LAZY PEOPLE. :) :p Frankly, I appreciated the review when I figured out what it was.

Just a one side glipse of the history. Completely laks any deep analisys of how the history played out. The opinions are comoleteñy bias and plain.

A more in depth analisis would have been more interesting and histoticaly accurate and not resemble to just one side pripaganda The documentation acompannih the are quite good with good animations and histolucal videos Overall is interesting to see as long as you are aware of the manipulation and all the bias involved.

The lasta chapter is just kind o a resumee of the previous ione so you can skip it comometeky. It shows one side if the historu quite weel , an interesting example of how to manipulate and bias your oponion on a matter if you don t know anything about the topic.

Four chapters + the 5th being a recap of the four previous episodes, the documentary lacks historical rigor and it is rather created in opinions of quite biased historians and well-recognised personalities close to the left wings of the current Spanish politics.

It lacks to perform an analysis of the Republican counterparts and the real causes of the origin of the Civil War as well as the crimes committed by the Republican side commanded by the radical side of the Socialist Party and the enormous influence those had in the starting of the Civil War, being Franco's revolt just a reaction to the Frente Popular assault to democracy, including killings of civilians, priests and politicians.

Biased.