Another initial route to the expoliation war was subscription and public input. The purpose of these inscriptions was to raise funds in favor of volunteers to go ahead, and for this purpose the Franco press published the names and surnames of donors, whose main function was to point out those who did not donate money. It was an important instrument for pressure: “Let us be generous with our brothers who give everything for Spain,” claimed Diario de Navarra in his July speech. After analyzing the ads published in the newspaper, the researcher Cesar Layana estimates that in Navarra at least 5,000,000 pesetas were received.

In money or in spices, the same was true for Spain. Thus, the National Treasury also gathered with profusion gold and silver jewelry. “Yesterday these objects were received at the Hacienda de la Diputación de Gipuzkoa...” The Falangist Unidad newspaper began one of its subscription articles in October 1936, while mass firing was taking place in that territory: two golden needles, four chains, a medallion, silver coins, a catarral, a rosary; families of these, a golden box, a golden cross…

All that money and treasure didn't always get to their place, and there were many who put their hand in the bag, starting with the Franco-Polo family. In 2019 El Mundo published the testament of the Spanish dictator, written in 1968, in which he inherited 28 million pesetas for his wife Carmen Polo and his daughter Carmen Franco. “How is it possible that in 1935 Franco was charging 2,400 pesetas – the current 6,400 euros – to accumulate that amount?” asks the journalist Joan Esculies in the November issue of Sapiens magazine. Fifteen days after the uprising “I already had 34 million pesetas of fortune”, says in the same article, it would currently amount to 81.2 million euros. To this end, he took into account the data provided by the historian Ángel Viñas.

Viñas has written the book The Other Side of the Caudillo (“The Other Side of the Caudillo”), in which he explains that one of Franco’s first sources of income was popular subscription or “national suskriptions” with irregular practices. It took corruption to the end, for example, with the so-called Operation Cafe. Brazilian dictator Getulio Vargas appropriated and sold millions of tons of coffee he gave away.

Also in arms companies

But to think that the assets of the franks are only those that put in a piece of paper would be too naive: the generalist had shares in companies related to the Nazi chemical industry and also used the National Industry Institute to exploit this network. In his half a million pesetas in the Spanish Union of Explosives (UEE), Alfred Nobel invented the “dynamite”, which he called the world’s most famous prizes, including the Nobel de la Paz, merged with the Spanish Society of Dynamite, created in Galdakao, and which today is MaxamCorp.

This multinational explosives is one of the main nests of the Basque and Spanish oligarchy, such as the Del Pino family or the president of Santiago Bergareche Vocento, and through the branch of Algerian origin Expal, S.A. has stained its hands in numerous armed conflicts in the world. Expal was bought in 2022 by Rheinmettal, the German multinational that has earned a fortune on the stock market since last October Israel Gaza began to slaughter, producer of the famous Leopard tanks.

Sapiens has published a list containing the Paca de Meiras, the palace of Canto del Pico and many other chalets and farms in Marbella, Madrid, Guadalajara, Miami and Rabat. At the time, these houses cost 26 million pesetas, today for lack of knowledge. If that were not enough, we know that in the Philippines Franco had 23,000 hectares of rural land, perhaps to simulate the great slaves of the past. We have read it to Mariano Sánchez Soler in his book Los Franco, S.A., but the journalist says it is impossible to know the value of these goods, since there is hardly any evidence.

In short, the famous Hispanist Paul Preston claims that all his fortune could reach 400 million euros.

[This article is part of the supplement Espoliación franco LARRUN]