The Bloch problem and Francoism against the mirror. Global perspectives, historical comparisons and the Eastern European socialist States

Abstract

This article offers a global and comparative historical perspective on Francoism, taking as its starting point Marc Bloch’s famous assertion that individuals resemble their time more than their parents. If we take this idea seriously, then comparing Francoism with the classical fascisms after 1945 loses its meaning, since those «parents» ceased to exist and we cannot know how they would have adapted to the new time. The article proposes that, from the 1950s onward, it is more useful to compare Francoism with the authoritarian regimes of Eastern Europe. At the same time, global history helps us understand Francoism not as an isolated regime but as one shaped by exchanges of many kinds with different states and political actors. Both the comparison with the East and the global perspective reveal a Francoism adapted to its time. However, the article questions certain enthusiastic and uncritical uses of global history: by emphasizing that Francoism was integrated into the global currents of its time, we risk overlooking the enduring features it maintained and instead imagining a natural evolution of the regime toward democracy. In this sense, appealing to time while forgetting the stubborn persistence of the parents —its fascist matrix— blurs the history of Francoism and ultimately yields an overly complacent interpretation of the regime’s development.