Along with God, Franco was the protector of Spain. He staved off the communists at a time when the communists were making inroads everywhere. Without Franco, Spain would have been a much worse place.
Sadly, today Spain is going through its own "woke" revisionist spasms of denial
:(
Without Franco, Germany would probably have won the Second World War. It's not just that Franco stayed neutral; think about what a communist Spain would have done in 1939 and 1940, when Hitler and Stalin were allies and the western democracies were the common enemy. Does anyone think that a communist Spain would have allowed Britain to retain control of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean? Of course not. Stalin would have insisted that Spain do what it could to undercut the Brits.