Years ago, when in college, I proposed to do a research paper on the Spanish Civil War. The professor gently tried steering me towards some other subject, because, as he insisted, "There were never so many lies about any event [in Europe during the mid-20th century] than that event, and you'll be going around in circles. Everything about that war, on both sides, was lied about. There's nothing to 'research' but lies."
I did the paper anyway, and the professor was right. I came to the weak conclusion that it was a good thing Francisco Franco had won--the milder of two evils--but man, even 40 years after the event, the purely factual material was sparse, if not nonexistent.
Nothing the leftists complain about concerning Franco compares to what the communists did in Spain. They desecrated graves, killed people for being Catholic, and generally plundered the countryside.