Apathetic? As I have heard he gave explicit orders to his ambassadors to protect jews. Spanish embassies in Europe brought here thousands of jews claimning them as sephards.

This thread is missing some points I think. Everywhere in the Pyrenees you may find thousands of bunkers from the Franco's times, which were built during the WWII because Franco was sure that Hitler would end invading Spain. Franco was not fascist. Franco was franquist. And through all his dictatorship he made use of the spanish fascists when he needed to, and kick them from the government when he wanted to.

As far as I know his represive measures were fusilating republican officers (and soldiers) and criminals of war (on the republican side). Since the end of the war the measures consisted on things as prohibiting the use of basque or catalonian, jailing communists (and other ideologies members), and restricting many kinds of freedom. Yes, he was a dictatorship and he did many bad things, but comparing him to Hitler or Mussolini is not accurate.

Would Spain have entered the WWII we would have been completely harrased by the allies, and we wouldn't still conserve our monumental capital. Franco, for one thing or another, didn't make Spain enter that horrible war, and sent the Blue Division (made of volunteers) to aid Hitler in the russian front (casually? or was it intended?). He achieved two things by sending it: give Hitler a symbolic aid (against Stalin's communists) and sending far away the most reactionary and extremist spanish fascists which he had at the end of the war.

The spanish civil war was horrible. And the winners did many horrible things to the losers (would the republicans have won, they would have done the same), but we should honour every spaniard and forgeiner who lost his or her life in that war, not just depriving a side of the honour to give it to the other side. Nor the republicans or the nationals were saints. I could mention true barbarities commited by both bands (for example the Gernica bombing by the nationals, or the blood-bath at Paracuellos del Jarama by the republicans, in both cases thousands of inocents were massively killed).

Fernando