A right-wing mayor has come under fire for distributing a calendar featuring Spain’s fascist dictator.
Francisco García Avilés shared a photo of the 2026 calendar on his personal social media account last Thursday (6 Nov).
It shows a portrait of dictator Francisco Franco alongside the eagle flag of Nationalist Spain.
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Captioned with the generalissimo’s surname five times, it also bears the Francoist slogans “¡Viva España!” and “¡Arriba España!”
The mayor wrote: “The Christmas calendars are now ready for collection.
“They are being handed out by the owner of the accounting firm at the firm’s own offices.”
Within hours, social media users were asking how they could get one too.
García Avilés is mayor of Puente de Génave – population 2,180 – in the province of Jaén, Andalusia.
He belongs to Vox, Spain’s far-right party and currently the third most popular in the country, as reported by Need To Know.
García Avilés has governed with an absolute majority since 2023 – the year Puente de Génave became the only town in Andalusia where Vox was the top-voted party in both local and general elections.
The accounting firm behind the Franco calendar has reportedly produced similar versions for over 30 years.
Once owned by García Avilés, the firm is now run by his ex-partner.
In 2024, the mayor distributed 800 copies of another calendar featuring both Franco and José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the fascist Falange Española party, along with the quote: “I am answerable only to God and history.”
Provincial authorities have confirmed that an investigation has been opened.
Miguel Ángel Valdivia, from the Jaén branch of Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE), called the tradition “a disgrace and a national embarrassment”.
Amid the backlash, García Avilés doubled down, posting: “The purpose of these calendars has never been anything other than to promote freedom of expression and conscience – values that represent the society we live in, a society that has been heavily censored in recent times by the left in this country.”
He added sarcastically: “In fact, given the commotion, I’m thinking of presenting the calendar at the MoMA in New York, since it’s nothing less than an undervalued work of art dedicated to a man whose tomb was desecrated a few years ago by the left in this country – simply because a bunch of traumatised people still can’t accept that they lost a war in 1939, and because the man featured in the calendar had placed Spain by 1975 among the 24 richest economies in the world, according to the World Bank.”
Franco’s regime is widely held responsible for between 150,000 and 200,000 deaths during (1936-39) and after (-1975) the Spanish Civil War – though some estimates rise to 400,000 when including those who perished in prisons and forced labour camps.
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