No, of course, neither side was perfect. I understand the idealism of some leftists, but I have always tended to think that leftist dictatorships are more dangerous than right wing dictatorships, for the very reason that they are usually more populist. Hitler, of course, is dubiously characterized as a rightist; he was a national socialist, and occupied the same niche as his Communist rivals.
If Franco did nothing else—and in fact he did a good deal—he managed to keep Hitler out of Spain and to give shelter to a lot of exiles who failed to find it in France and elsewhere.
When I studied classical history, I was taught that Athens was good and Sparta was bad. True, to some extent. But the disease represented by Alcibiades was more dangerous than any other, IMHO, and as Xenophon recognized, Sparta had some things that Athens lacked. The Macedonians only came to power and took over Greece after Sparta had been weakened.
Indeed, for instance, Franco defended private property, which was a key element in the economic development of Spain in the 1950’s and 1960’s. During this last decade, Spanish growing was only surpased by Japan among the developed nations.
It is also true that in the WWII, willing it or not, Franco carried out the task which Britain had endowed Spain since the treaty of Algeciras (1906), that is, to keep any other powers far away from the Gibraltar strait, turning Gibraltar effectively in an island which could be easily defended by the far superior Royal Navy. During the WWII Franco played for the allies, no matter what the Left says about him as a lackey of Hitler.
It is true that under the dictatorship, Spain evolved more rapidly than a democracy. For instance, Franco could force children of rural, poor areas to study far away from their homes, avoiding them to be employed from an early age in agriculture, hindering their potential. He could broke by force such poverty circle and turn rural poor men and women into prepared workers of an industrial economy. That cannot be done in a democracy.
However, a big problem remainded, which can be seen reflected in 3/11. That is, that under Franco regime, Spaniards could not mature politically. They wanted to become a democracy, as the rest of western Europe, but it seems a majority of the population is not willing to assume the responsibility. For many Spaniards, democracy seems to be some kind of Franco’s regime with political parties (for instance, Civil Rights are a dim idea for many of us), an aesthetic democracy, as we say. That is the niche the Socialists cleverly occupied: they were free to develop many Francoist policies since they found a moral justification to all its acts saying that they had been the opposition to Franco and that they had suffered much during the dictatorship, which is simply not true, as I have explained above, because they were nurtured and protected by the Spanish security corps even before Franco’s death, in order to be a firewall against Communism.
Spaniards felt well buying that product, because that is simply a well designed political one. Spaniards had what they used to have, an authoritarian government with Montesquieu dead, a Socialist economy... but they did not have to bother about responsibility and the moral side of the issue.
That is the reason, no matter we’ve been deceived, that I think the ultimate responsible of 3/11 is all of us.