The Nostalgia Factory: How Social Media Shapes the Myth of Authoritarian Regimes

“We used to live better under Franco” or “When he (Mussolini) was around, things were better” are the most commonly used narratives about Franco, Mussolini and their dictatorship, according to the content analyzed by Maldita.es and Facta. This discourse, which presents both regimes as a time of greater security, material well-being, and stability compared to the current democratic era, circulates widely on social media. To convey this narrative, the content relies on a series of elements such as disinformation content, appealing to the experiences of older people, the recurrent use of direct comparisons with the present, the introduction of numerical data without any context as evidence of credibility, and the use of memes that condense the message. Although sometimes adopts an ironic or humorous tone, this narrative could have a real impact by framing these dictatorships as times of order, prosperity and security, it fuels nostalgia for authoritarian regimes and casts doubt on democracy today.

With the rise of social media, myths and false narratives have found new forms and vast alternative spaces in which to circulate and reach younger generations as well. It is therefore important to debunk these propagandistic lies, not only out of respect for historical truth.

In Spain: testimonies from people who lived under Franco´s regime used to legitimate the narrative

In Spain, the phrase “Con Franco se vivía mejor” has become shorthand for a set of recurring subnarratives that are repeated across dozens of Telegram channels and viral TikTok or YouTube clips: “life was safer”, “housing was affordable”, “public works were efficient”, and “taxes were fairer”.

The Spanish YouTube channel RescueYou, with 247,000 subscribers, is one of those promoting these claims. It does so mainly through short videos in which older people are interviewed and asked explicitly whether life was better under Franco. “I lived under Franco. I lived in a ground floor apartment, my parents never locked the door. My mother had a curtain, which she drew at night and we slept peacefully. Not now. I think that says it all, without mentioning that I had a job under Franco, I went to soccer games, came back from soccer games and had no problems. I had no problems under Franco…”, says one interviewee.

History senior professor at University Carlos III in Madrid, Matilde Eiroa says in her book Franco, from hero to comic figure of contemporary culture that “in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the nostalgic phrase ‘We lived better under Franco’ became widespread, alluding to the disenchantment with democracy and the idea that under Franco there was peace, there was no crime, and there were job prospects”. She explains to Maldita.es that with “simplistic language that is easy for everyone to understand, they present the dictatorship in a biased way, highlighting its supposed economic achievements or social order accomplishments, while hiding how those achievements were made or how that social order was reached, which was based on political persecution, lack of freedoms, violence, favoring the rich, big businessmen, and landowners at the expense of workers…”.

In other cases, they attempt to legitimize the narrative through testimonies from foreign individuals, as we observed in the demonstration against the PSOE following the release of the UCO report, near the party headquarters on Calle Ferraz in June 2025. YouTuber David Santos interviewed a young woman, emphasizing her Ecuadorian nationality. After a series of questions, including “Long live Franco?”, the girl ends up exclaiming “Long live Franco!” The video is titled “Ecuadorian woman yesterday in Ferraz: ‘Long live Franco and long live Spain’”.

For Kye Allen, PhD in International Relations and researcher at Oxford University, this content is part of “the normalization of what happened under these fascist dictatorships and authoritarian regimes and a kind of trivialization of the crimes, but it also looks at the past with an optimistic perspective and a certain nostalgia for these regimes”. In short, “glorifying the past”.

Disinformation emerges with current events

The narrative also recovers strength with events such as the blackout in Spain on28 April, 2025, or the passage of the DANA (Spanish acronym for isolated high level depression) through Valencia in October 2024. That is to say, we see a clear reaction from those who promote this narrative, taking advantage of current events to say that “under Franco this would not happen” or “thanks to what Franco did, things were not so serious.” For example, in the case of the DANA, narratives referring to the destruction of reservoirs built by Franco resurfaced. “After the flood of ’57, Franco ordered the construction of a new riverbed, along with a series of reservoirs and dams to contain the water from these phenomena. This government has demolished four of these reservoirs, and here we have the result”, said one of the most viral posts. Indeed, after the 1957 flood, orders were given to redirect the course of the Turia River and build the Loriguilla reservoir, which is still in operation. But it is not true that reservoirs have been demolished: the only structures demolished are seven obsolete small dams and weirs that were not built to store water.

The phrase “we used to live better under Franco” is also often seen next to photos from those years showing families, usually large ones. An example: in August 2025, X’s AI, Grok, mistakenly identified a photo of a family from Malaga taken during the Franco regime (1952) as if it were from Alabama, United States, during the Great Depression. Such photos can be seen on social media platforms such as Instagram or X with the phrase “We lived better under Franco”, although sometimes with an opposite meaning, using this phrase to say the exact opposite.

“Another social policy in which Franco’s regime was most active in terms of propaganda was housing”, notes historian Carlos Barciela in  Con Franco vivíamos mejor. Franco presented housing as a social right, but in practice the so-called “battle of housing” was more a slogan than a reality. As Barciela writes, “inefficiency in reconstruction and a very wide margin for speculation were two fundamental characteristics of the Francoist governments’ action in housing and urban planning.” The creation of a Ministry of Housing and the first National Housing Plan (1956–1960) “did not fulfil the propagandistic expectations that accompanied its birth. Its action was very limited, the construction of social housing was, at most, merely palliative, and it mainly favoured private business in the construction sector and middle-income groups.” Even in the 1960s, “the construction of social and protected housing remained very weak. The boom in building was the work of private developers and banks”. Yet today, messages such as “Under Franco, the average worker could afford to buy a flat in Santa Pola in four years” or “With the passing of the Democratic Memory Law, which makes it illegal to say ‘VIVA FRANCO,’ do you know if the owners of the more than 4 million social housing units that were built will be considered squatters and evicted?” circulate widely on social media, projecting an image of prosperity that erases the broader context.

Disinformation is used as a vehicle to spread this and other narratives, using simplified phrases, posters, or photos. A widely used visual example is to compare photos, one from the present day and another from the Franco era, to promote narratives, for example, against migration.

Did Mussolini and Franco do “some good things” too?

In recent years, Maldita.es has verified other content, such as Franco’s creation of Social Security, paid vacations, and Sunday rest days, among others. For Eiroa, these narratives and their dissemination on social media platforms serve as a vehicle “for propaganda to attract young people” as well as to “spread their ideology and praise the figures of these three leaders: they are recognizable icons that allow them to connect very well with that audience and recruit new followers.” As Barciela noted, this was also at the core of the Francoist regime itself. Franco was systematically reinvented by propaganda as the embodiment of every possible virtue “a distinguished soldier, the youngest general in Europe, the man who defeated communism, saved Spain from World War II, and even the most worthy candidate for sainthood.” He was compared to figures such as Caesar, El Cid, Charles V or even Abraham Lincoln, and described by admirers as “the only great man of the 20th century.” In Barciela’s words, “these supposed virtues were nothing more than the fruit of Francoist propaganda, an enormous machine of manipulation and lies that worked at full capacity during the dictatorship.”

Similar narratives circulate in Italy. When the Christmas season arrives, various posts appear on social media claiming that people who criticize or despise Mussolini and fascism should refuse (or at least donate to charity) their tredicesima (the extra month’s pay for employees and pensioners paid in December), because it was supposedly a concession granted by the Duce during the Ventennio, the fascist period.

These annual claims, however, are based on a completely false story. The thirteenth-month salary, as we know it today, was not a concession of fascism; it is the result of trade-union struggles, the very ones Mussolini had made illegal while in power.

Originally, the thirteenth month was a Christmas bonus that some employers, especially in large companies, granted on their own initiative to employees. On August 5, 1937, during the fascist regime, the National Collective Labor Agreement (Contratto Collettivo Nazionale di Lavoro, CCNL) for industry was ratified. Article 13 required the payment of the thirteenth month. But this was very different from what is known today. The fascist “thirteenth” applied exclusively to the industrial sector and only to employees with the “impiegato” (white-collar) classification. Manual workers, for example, were completely excluded. It was therefore a sectoral and limited measure that formalized a practice already partially in place in major Italian firms. The same collective agreement, moreover, significantly worsened conditions for industrial workers: for example, Article 8 of the CCNL increased working hours from ten to twelve.

The thirteenth month, understood not as a “bonus” for a few but as a right for all, was instead extended in two steps after the fall of fascism in 1943: first to industrial workers with the interconfederal agreement signed in Rome on October 27, 1946, and subsequently to all employees in every sector with the President of the Republic’s decree no. 1070 of July 28, 1960. This is therefore the official birth date of today’s tredicesima.

Another narrative that periodically spreads on social media is that Mussolini “created pensions”. This thesis has been promoted over the years even by prominent Italian politicians. In 2016 Matteo Salvini, leader of the Lega Nord and currently Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Transport, said in a radio interview that in Italy “social security was brought by Mussolini, not by Martians”. In reality, as stated on the website of Italy’s National Social Security Institute (INPS), social security took its “first steps” in 1898 “with the founding of the National Fund for disability and old-age insurance for workers (Law 350 of 1898)”. It was, INPS continues, “a voluntary insurance supplemented by an incentive contribution and by optional contributions from employers. Each member had an individual account credited with the contributions paid, the matching amounts (i.e., the Fund’s top-ups), and the relevant interest”.

Then, in 1919 (three years before the fascist regime began) disability and old-age insurance became mandatory for private-sector employees, and disability and old-age pensions were introduced, with minimum requirements of 65 years of age and 12 years of work. In the same year, mandatory insurance against involuntary unemployment was also introduced. “It is the first step toward a system intended to protect workers from all events that can undermine individual and family income, whose management was entrusted to the National Fund for Social Insurance (Cassa Nazionale delle Assicurazioni Sociali, CNAS), as it was renamed” INPS recounts.

During fascism, in 1933, protections and the pool of insured persons were expanded, and the Fund was renamed the “National Fascist Institute of Social Security” (Istituto Nazionale Fascista della Previdenza Sociale, INFPS), becoming a public-law body with legal personality and autonomous management that brought the various social security funds under a single administration. In 1943 the word “Fascist” was removed from the name, and the body became definitively the “National Institute of Social Security” (Istituto Nazionale della Previdenza Sociale, INPS).

The mythologizing of Mussolini the statesman

Among the false fascist myths that portray Mussolini as a “good person” is the story of land reclamation. The draining of swamps is still considered in Italian public opinion “one of the regime’s most indisputable achievements”, writes Jérôme Gautheret, journalist and former Le Monde correspondent in Italy. The actual results achieved by the regime in this area, however, “prompt us to temper this view, to the point of asking whether what we observe almost a century later is not above all the result of a masterful propaganda operation”, he continues.

Looking at the numbers, if the initial plan was to improve 8 million hectares of land nationwide, the area actually reclaimed was much smaller. As the historians Marco Armiero and Roberta Biasillo write in their essay La natura del duce. Una storia ambientale del fascismo (“The Duce’s Nature: An Environmental History of Fascism”), “although the regime declared victory in the war on water with the reclamation of four million hectares (half of what had been planned), two million of these were still underway and one and a half million had in fact been reclaimed by liberal governments before 1922”. A more historically accurate estimate of the land area reclaimed by the fascist regime is around 600,000 hectares, reports the Italian online outlet Il Post. 

Another viral narrative seeks to depict Mussolini as a great statesman who foresaw, decades in advance, what would happen in the future. One of the most viral “predictions” attributed to the fascist dictator is the following: “Beware of the Yellow Peril. In the coming decades we will have to watch out for Chinese expansionism. They will invade the world with their boundless prolificacy, with their low-cost products, and with the epidemics they cultivate at home”. According to posts shared online, this alleged quotation was delivered by the Duce in 1927 during a farewell speech to the fascist hierarch Galeazzo Ciano, on the occasion of his appointment as “Italian representative in Shanghai”, China.

This story is completely unfounded and false. In 1927 Galeazzo Ciano was not appointed ambassador to Shanghai. That year he was sent to Beijing as a segretario di legazione (the lowest rank in the diplomatic career) under Italy’s minister (a diplomatic rank below ambassador) Daniele Varè. There is also no trace of any farewell speech by Mussolini for the occasion. It was not customary to organize public ceremonies for the departure of a mere legation secretary. Ciano was appointed ambassador to Shanghai in May 1930, a few days after his marriage to Edda Mussolini, the Duce’s daughter. The public speeches delivered by Benito Mussolini in 1930 are collected in the volume Discorsi del 1930 di Benito Mussolini, published the following year and accessible online. It contains no farewell speech to Galeazzo Ciano.

The only reference to China by Benito Mussolini dated 1927 is found in a passage from the celebrated “Ascension Day speech”, in which Mussolini theorized about the obstacle posed by the opposition to “the functioning of a sound political regime” and informed the Chamber about progress in the fight against the mafia. The full text is available in the Historical Archive of the Chamber, and in a passage about China it reads: “Under the direct supervision of public health authorities, nine thousand ships have been deratized; that is, those rodents that bring contagious diseases from the East have been killed: that East from which many pleasant things come to us, yellow fever and Bolshevism…”. In that text, therefore, Mussolini did not predict “Chinese expansionism” nor epidemics coming from China, as is attributed to him online.

The preference for authoritarian regimes has been growing among young Spanish and Italians in recent years

Last spring, the market research and data analytics firm YouGov conducted a survey, for the German foundation Tui Stiftung, on young Europeans’ trust in democracy, collecting nearly 7,000 responses from people aged 16 to 26 (Gen Z) in several European countries. 56%of Italian respondents said they were in favour of unconditional support for democracy. This figure places Italy roughly in the middle of the ranking, led by Germany (71%) and followed by Poland (48%).

As regards satisfaction with the democratic system, only 17%of young Italians said they were satisfied, while 43% said they were dissatisfied and the rest (almost 41%) were undecided. In this regard, 24% of young people said they would support an authoritarian government “under certain conditions”, a percentage similar to that found in other countries such as France, Spain and Poland.

In Spain, CIS surveys in recent years show that, although the majority of citizens (79% in 2025) still consider democracy to be the best form of government, support for authoritarian regimes has grown in recent years. In 2007, only 5.8% of Spaniards believed that, in certain circumstances, an authoritarian regime could be preferable to a democratic one. Today, that figure stands at 8.6% (and exceeds 18% if we add those who are indifferent on the issue).

What stands out is that this increase is concentrated among younger people, especially since 2018. In the 18-24 age group, sympathy for authoritarianism has risen from 5.9% in 2018 to 17.3% in 2025, and in the 25-34 age group from 4.9% to 17.4%. In other words, those under 35, who were born after Franco’s dictatorship, are now the most open to non-democratic alternatives, according to CIS surveys. This trend is also confirmed by a survey published in September 2025 by 40dB for El País, according to which one in four men in Generation Z (25.9% of young people aged 18 to 26) consider that “in some circumstances” authoritarianism may be preferable to the democratic system, compared to 18.3% of women of the same age. The gender gap widens among millennials (aged 27 to 42), where 22.9% of men accept an authoritarian regime compared to 12.7% of women.

Finally, another indicator in line with previous surveys appears in the CIS study on Ideology and Polarisation from October 2024: over a quarter of citizens (27%) agreed with the statement “I would not mind living in a less democratic country if it guaranteed me a better quality of life”. Among young people aged 18 to 24, this figure rises to 38%.