“Franco allied himself with Hitler and allowed The Condor Legion(the nascent Luftwaffe) to bomb the basque town of Guernica.”
Franco accepted aid from Germany & Italy because nobody else would help him; the International Brgades (and Soviet pilots in Soviet planes) fought for the communists.
There is no dispute that when the Cold War started, the US went to Franco hat in hand and asked for an alliance; he was completely vindicated. Americans justified killing a lot more Japanese civilians to force the surrender in 1945; the bombing of Guernica helped deliver northern Spain to the Nationalists in 1937 (certainly speeding up the war, which at that point was contained in the east).
Franco was one of the last generals to join the military revolt; the original leader (Sanjurgo) died in a plane crash trying to fly from Portugal at the beginning, and General Goded was executed after the revolt failed in the east. The remaining general (Mola) was in control of Navarre but needed arms and reinforcements from Franco’s Army of Africa, who double-timed up the peninsula to provide both; he never contested Franco’s more powerful position.
You wouldn’t have wanted to live under Franco.