The Connection Is Still There

(The Manila Times) - MADRID: Spain's late dictator Francisco Franco fathered an illegitimate son with the wife of a lieutenant in 1936 when he was the military commander of the Canary Islands, according to a new book which will be published next week.

The book also says he had a bastard Filipino-blooded half-brother, sired by Franco's father Nicolas Franco, a Navy paymaster, and a 14-year-old Filipina.

Background

Franco ruled Spain with an iron fist from 1939 until a few years before his death in 1975. Some years before he died, his rule became more benign.

He never recognized this son, Spanish author Fernando Gracia writes in his new book called The Secret Son of Franco, the Europa Press agency reported Tuesday.

The book alleges that the son was born just before Franco took part in 1936 in a failed coup attempt against a left-wing government that ushered in the Spanish Civil War, according to the agency.

Born in 1892, Franco—who staunchly supported the Roman Catholic Church while in power—married Carmen Polo in 1923. The couple had one daughter, Maria, who was born three years later and died in 1988.

Some Spanish writers continue to live abroad. They say that censorship under Franco drove many of the country's editors and writers into exile yet even today, with democracy well entrenched, they say the country's literary voices struggle to be heard—and read.

Many other Spaniards, however, lament that with democracy, Spain has become a licentious country. They say that respect for Roman Catholicism and Christian norms of good taste and behavior is disappearing in many families, leading the Spanish nation to the same downward moral slope as the rest of Western Europe is aliding.