“Thanks to the Spanish Army and Franco the Communist attack on Catholic Spain was thwarted,” Prof. Giertych told the European Parliament. “The presence of such people in European politics as Franco guaranteed the maintenance of traditional values in Europe and we lack such statesmen today. Christian Europe is losing against atheistic socialists today and this has to change.”

“I thought it was necessary to remind listeners in the EU Parliament,” the Professor said later, “that this was not an anti-democratic movement, but a movement that was in defense of certain values that are inherent in the Catholic way of seeing things pertinent to government to run civil society. The uprising was a defense of Catholic Spain, so the civil war in Spain was a conflict between Catholic Spain and communist Spain.” The Professor also used his speech to praise António de Oliveira Salazar, Portugal’s Catholic dictator who, like Franco, managed to keep his country free from the devastation of the Second World War. (Salazar was also a very close friend of Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith, who claimed in his memoirs that if Salazar had lasted a few more years, Rhodesia would still exist today). ~Andrew Cusack