Spain: General Francisco Franco, military dictator (Caudillo) of Spain, 1939-1975

Francisco Franco Bahamonde (4 December 1892 Ð 20 November 1975) was the dictator of Spain from 1939 to his death in 1975. A conservative, he was shocked when the monarchy was removed and replaced with a democratic republic in 1931. With the 1936 elections, the conservatives fell and the leftist Popular Front came to power. Looking to overthrow the republic, Franco and other generals staged a partially successful coup, which started the Spanish Civil War. With the death of the other generals, Franco quickly became his faction's only leader. Franco received military support from local fascist, monarchist and right-wing groups, and also from Hitler's Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Fascist Italy. Leaving half a million dead, the war was eventually won by Franco in 1939. He established an autocratic dictatorship, Francoist Spain, which he defined as a totalitarian state, installing himself as head of state and government, with one legal political party: a merger of the monarchist party and the fascist party which had helped him. Franco established a repression which was characterized by concentration camps, forced labor and executions, mostly against political and ideological enemies, being estimated to have caused from about 200,000 to 400,000 deaths. After ruling for nearly forty years, Franco died in 1975. He had restored the monarchy and left King Juan Carlos I as his successor. Juan Carlos led the transition to democracy, leaving Spain with its current political system. (Photo by: Pictures From History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)