Spain’s Grand Lodge is aiming to recover its reputation after it was almost wiped out by the dictatorship

Juan G. Bedoya
El Pais English
March 24, 2016

It’s never too late. That was the spirit in which Spain’s freemasons held their recent annual assembly in Madrid, welcoming representatives of lodges from all over the world. The meeting came after a number of other major events organized by Spain’s Grand Lodge in recent months, all part of a bid by an organization that was once ferociously persecuted by General Francisco Franco to rebuild its reputation and establish that it isn’t, and never has been, a danger to the country. After Franco died, there was arguably greater resistance to legalizing the freemasons than there was to allowing the Communist Party to operate.

During his 40-year dictatorship, Franco was fond of referring to the “Jewish-Masonic conspiracy,” even doing so in his final speech, given from the balcony of the Royal Palace in September 1975, less than two months before his death. With the dictator out of the way, Spain began its slow transition toward democracy, as political parties, labor unions, and religious movements were all legalized and civil rights restored. All except for the freemasons, that is, who had to wait until 1979 to be legalized, and only then after the High Court had overruled the Interior Ministry’s initial refusal to allow them to be registered.