Spain (HM6)

Flag since 1938

Spain in 1940 is still suffering from the recently ended Civil War: About half a million people died in it, about the same number - mostly leftists and Basques - fled to other countries (mostly France and Mexico), as many or more were sent to the concentration camps. And in some places, leftist partisans, the "Spanish Maquis" are still continuing to fight - especially in mountainous or forested areas in the Northwest, West, East and South, but even in the big cities like Madrid.

The "Caudillo" Francisco Franco has won this war, but now prefers if his country had peace, which is why he reduced the army from a million men to a quarter of that. His enemies call him a fascist, although his party is rather a mixture of the small Falangist party (the only real fascists) and monarchist, Carlist, Catholic, and other conservative to feudalist groups. Which makes Spain still a state with "white terror", censorship, no parliament, outlawed abortion/divorce/civil marriage, and oppression of minorities - but still not as bad as Nazi Germany.

Although Franco has most of the Monarchists behind him, Ex-King Alfonso XIII, crown prince Juan and the latter's Son Juan Carlos stay in their Exile in Rome. Which reminds a bit of the situation with admiral Horthy in Hungary...

Adolf Nazi and Benito Mussolini who helped him win the Civil War would like to get help from him in return, but as the people around him say, Franco organizes the papers on his desk in two stacks: That which is unimportant now, and that which will become unimportant if you wait long enough. However, he used the opportunity and occupied the city of Tangier in Morocco on June 10th, when France was weakened by the war.