Spanish dictator Franco was missing a testicle

MADRID – Another bit of history about Spanish dictator Francisco Franco (1892-1975) was revealed in a newspaper article Sunday: he only had one testicle, according to the granddaughter of his doctor.

Ana Puigvert, herself a doctor, told journalist Jose Maria Zavala in El Mundo that her grandfather Antonio Puigvert, a urologist known to have had Franco as a patient, had told her about the dictator’s condition.

It is believed his loss stemmed from a war injury in 1916 when Franco was wounded during battle at El Biutz, near Ceuta, which today is a Spanish enclave on the Moroccan Mediterranean coast.

On 28-29 June, 1916, Franco, then a captain, led an attack in the region which was then a Spanish protectorate and was hit in his lower abdomen and seriously wounded.

The Spanish journalist, citing several authors of Franco biographies, added that such an injury would have affected Franco’s reproductive organs and made him sterile.

Such a theory adds to stories that Franco’s only child, his daughter Carmen born in 1926, was actually the daughter of his brother, Ramon Franco.

Following the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) which overthrew the republican government, Franco ruled Spain until his death in 1975.

The end of the Franco regime brought about the return of democracy to Spain with the first free elections in June 1977.

AFP / Expatica