Physicists working at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid were unpleasantly surprised by the letter of our colleague, Julio Gonzalo, about the development of physics in Spain under the Franco regime (Physics Today, March 2002, page 14). Although we respect each person’s right to express his opinion (a highly risky activity in Franco’s time!), we deeply disagree with Gonzalo’s statements about physics and strongly reject his view of the last years of the dictator’s regime.
Science in spain did begin to develop in the last years of Francisco Franco’s life, but it really progressed only after the establishment of a democratic regime. Credit for that development is due to the invaluable work of scientists who fought against a hostile environment and to the relative economic growth in the years preceding Franco’s death.
Contrary to Gonzalo’s opinion, Franco was ultimately responsible for a devastating war in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed, for a drastic stunting of Spain’s economic and scientific growth, and for a 40-year period of political oppression.
In the last five years of Franco’s life, several professors were banned from the physics department of our university because of their political opinions. Others, who came to Spain in the late 1960s and early 1970s after physicist Nicolas Cabrera was invited to return from exile, soon had to leave the country because of political pressure and an atmosphere hostile to science. And what is much worse, university students and political prisoners were killed by the police or sentenced to death by the courts up until a few months before Franco’s death.
Those activities were by no means signs of a “benign elder statesman,” but hallmarks of one of the most notorious fascist dictators of the last century, a fact that should not be forgotten or disguised.