📍El Ferrol, Galicia, Spain
1892 – 1975“I was born Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco Bahamonde on the 4th of December 1892 in El Ferrol, a naval garrison town in Galicia, the son of a naval paymaster. El Ferrol gave me the military values and the Galician stubbornness that defined my entire life. I rose through the Spanish army, commanded the Foreign Legion in Morocco, and led the Nationalist uprising against the Spanish Republic in July 1936. The Civil War lasted three years and killed half a million Spaniards. I governed Spain from 1939 until my death in 1975 — thirty-six years of authoritarian rule that suppressed Catalan, Basque, and Galician cultures and executed thousands of political opponents. Spain entered the modern world after my death. What I built was not meant to outlast me and did not.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today
Sources: Preston, P. Franco: A Biography (1993), HarperCollins; Payne, S. The Franco Regime 1936-1975 (1987), University of Wisconsin Press