People my age will remember the running gag on SNL about the death of Franco, but when he was alive, he was no joke; as the story goes, he was such an icy bastard, even Hitler was afraid of him. His efforts to defend traditional Spanish values against its perceived enemies extended to Basque and Catalan nationalism as well as left-wing political movements. As I understand it, it even encompassed soccer games between Barcelona and Real Madrid.
The Spanish conservative party, the PP, is a genuinely democratic party, but there have always been suspicions that it retained a few strands of Franco’s DNA. After yesterday’s gratuitous and short-sighted display of force against the Catalan referendum, everyone in Catalonia, Spain, and the world knows the answer to that question, and the Spanish political system will be feeling the effects for years to come.