{"id":8099,"date":"2025-11-20T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/?p=8099"},"modified":"2025-11-19T15:30:40","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T15:30:40","slug":"francisco-franco-is-still-dead-songs-in-celebration-by-begona-echeverria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/2025\/11\/20\/francisco-franco-is-still-dead-songs-in-celebration-by-begona-echeverria\/","title":{"rendered":"“\u2019Francisco Franco is Still Dead:\u2019 Songs in Celebration” by Bego\u00f1a Echeverria"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Bego\u00f1a Echeverria<\/strong>
b.echeverria@ucr.edu<\/strong>
November 20, 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>
S.E. El general\u00edsimo<\/em>. <\/strong>Ca\u00f1avate. Junta Delegada de Defensa de Madrid, Delegaci\u00f3n de Propaganda y Prensa: 1936-1939.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I first heard of Francisco Franco from Chevy Chase\u2019s iconic sketch on \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d Riffing on repeated NBC news reports on the dictator\u2019s supposedly imminent death for weeks before, \u201cWeekend Update\u201d host Chevy Chase announced Franco\u2019s death, then quoted President Nixon praising Hitler as \u201ca loyal friend and ally of the United States. He earned world-wide respect for Spain through firmness and fairness\u201d \u2013 as a photograph of Franco grinning alongside Hitler is displayed. Watching the show on a little black-and-white TV in the kitchen with my mother, Pilarcho, I chuckled at the skit, as my mother held her fist in the air in triumph and scoffed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was 50 years ago. On November 20, 1975, dictator Francisco Franco\u2014or  El Caudillo por la Gracia de Dios<\/em>, the Head of the Spanish State and the Head of the Government by the Grace of God, his preferred title\u2014was finally dead. I recall no discussion of this momentous event with my mother after the skit was over. Ama did not elaborate on who Franco was, or why she was happy he was gone. And it would be decades before I would broach the subject again, not because I was afraid to or uninterested. It just never occurred to me. It was as if that gesture of defiance was all that my mother needed for closure. Perhaps that\u2019s true. But when I did get curious about this dark chapter in Spanish and Basque history, when Franco ruled from 1939-1975, Ama didn\u2019t have that much to say. No specifics, anyway. Maybe that\u2019s not unusual. Like many immigrants, perhaps my mother had decided not to dwell on the more unsavory aspects of her country of origin. Or maybe Ama didn\u2019t say much about Franco because his oppression didn\u2019t impinge on her daily life. Possibly her life was not very different from that of her mother and grandmother before her, so there may not have been noticeable interruptions to her life experiences that she could attribute to the dictatorship. As a girl, she worked alongside her family on the baserri<\/em>; as a young woman, she worked as a maid at a hotel\/restaurant. Then she married my father, moved to America, and started a family. Never did she complain (at least to me) about the \u201ctraditional\u201d strictures placed upon her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The daughter of Basque immigrants to southern California, Bego\u00f1a Echeverria is the Faculty Director of University Honors at UC Riverside and Associate Dean in the Division of Undergraduate Education. She has produced scholarly and creative works on Basque identity and culture. These include the monograph “Witches” and Wily Women: Saving Noka Through Basque Folklore and Song<\/em>, the historical novels The Hammer of Witches<\/em> and Apparitions<\/em>, the play “Picasso Presents Gernika,” and four CDs with NOKA. With Annika Speer and Jacqueline Postajian, she is co-writer of the short film “Children of Guernica.”<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n\n\n\n

And yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wonder what Ama\u2019s life would have been like had she not grown up during the Franco regime. For his triumph in the Spanish Civil War reversed policies of the short-lived Second Democratic Republic (1931-1936) that greatly expanded women\u2019s rights. Alongside men, they were given the right to a free public education, the right to vote and the possibility of (civil) divorce for the first time. But the opportunities came to an abrupt end when Franco won the war on April 1, 1939. Rather than a democratic republic aspiring to expand the rights of women, \u201cTrue Catholic Womanhood\u201d reigned supreme. Women were extorted to focus on raising patriotic children for the Fatherland, to sublimate their own aspirations to support those of their men, and discouraged from pursuing university educations.[1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether Ama ever felt the lack of prospects ushered in by Franco\u2019s policies and politics, she did not let on. But I sometimes feel anger on her behalf \u2013 and on behalf of all the girls and women of Spain, in the Basque Country and beyond \u2013 for the freedoms and opportunities denied them by Franco and his minions. I channeled these feelings into lyrics I wrote for \u201cAma\u201d in my play, \u201cPicasso Presents Gernika.\u201d  As readers of this blog likely know, Franco allowed Hitler\u2014with assistance from Mussolini\u2014to bomb Gernika on April 26, 1937. It was the first aerial bombing of a civilian target, and understandably, parents sent their children abroad for safe-keeping: 20,000 in all.[2]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1990s while living in Donostia, I met a British woman whose father had been among the 4,000 children evacuated to England, along with his brother. Eventually, their mother called for the brother to return to Spain, but not my friend\u2019s father. He never learned why. Based on this story, in my play a mother sends her son and daughter to England after the bombing of Gernika. She eventually calls her son home, but leaves her daughter Andrea (\u201cwoman,\u201d in Basque) in England, believing her daughter will have a better life under a democracy than a dictatorship. It is only at the end of the play that Andrea learns this. Below is an English version of lyrics I originally wrote in Basque. <\/p>\n\n\n