I had a grandmother who had been a Democratic labor activist in new York in the 30s and 40s, and she liked to take her grandchildren to Europe to educate them a little. She died before I was old enough. A couple of my cousins made it. She refused to go to Spain as long as Franco was in power. I was offered a chance to live there with a local family for 11th grade, and I took it. I wasn't prepared for the jump back in time, but it was very educational. It was frowned upon, but I took the trouble to learn to speak Catalan while I was there (we were in Barcelona), and never regretted it.
I was just back in Barcelona three days ago, and the taxi driver who drove me back to the airport couldn't believe he was talking to an American, asking how in the world someone from Texas had bothered to learn Catalan (and still spoke it 45 years later)? I told him that when I lived there, Catalan was suppressed by the Franco regime, and newspapers and TV programs in Catalan were forbidden. It was taught at the local university as a foreign (!!) language.
But time was catching up to Spain, and there was less and less Franco could do about it. He still had his armies of police everywhere, and Catalan and Basque were pretty much officially forbidden. But what happened in France and Germany in 1968 didn't go unnoticed in Spain, and Franco knew he wouldn't live forever. He was even said to have told Juan Carlos, the future (and present) nominal king of Spain, "You will be able to do things I never could." It wasn't clear if Franco had meant because his fascist past prevented him from acquiring the right mindset, or because he feared his supporters would overthrow him, even after 30 years in power.
Today, the radio, TV newspapers and even street signs are all in Catalan. Signs in the airport are in Catalan, Spanish and English. The wide avenues of Barcelona, all named after Fascist Generals and Fascist political heroes of the 1930s, are all now renamed to what they were before the civil war.
= new reply since forum marked as read