Fr Martin Adolf Bormann

He was Martin Bormann's eldest and AH's godson. The second photo is presumably from the day of his ordination.

As a boy, he was actually arrested by the Americans whilst he was serving Mass.

Sadly, he later "left" the priesthood to get "married" to a nun.

And finally, before he died, he was accused, whilst he had been ministering as a priest and working as a teacher in a posh boarding school, of having had gay sex with one of the young boys he'd been in charge of.

(Funny how these things happen, but a grimly instructive irony that the same accusations that had been made against Catholic priests by the Third Reich in the 1930s should again be made against the son of the Party Chairman only a generation later!)

So all-in-all a partly inspiring but mainly tragic life, and a story of a young faith successively betrayed, first by the Third Reich and then by the Catholic Church itself at the Second Vatican Council, when it turned its back on its heritage and embraced the same Americanist ideology that had already done for Germany.

On his soul, and on the souls of all the Faithful Departed, may God have mercy!

Over 21% of Spaniards think the Franco years were ‘good or very good,’ survey shows

Among voters of the mainstream conservative Popular Party (PP), more people believe the dictatorship was ‘good’ than ‘bad.’ And 61% of far-right Vox voters believe the democratic system is worse or much worse than Francoism ever was

Pro-Franco rally in July 2018 in Cuelgamuros Valley outside Madrid.
SANTI BURGOS

NATALIA JUNQUERA
Madrid - OCT 13, 2025 - 16:55 WEST

More than 21% of the Spanish population considers the years of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship (1939-1975) to have been “good or very good,” according to the latest CIS poll, compared to 65.5% of the population who says they were “bad or very bad.”

Disapproval of the dictatorship is four percentage points higher among women, who needed a man’s supervision to do things like open a bank account under Franco. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the dictator’s death, and the Spanish government has organized hundreds of events to celebrate the country’s significant transformation since then.

By political sympathies, within the mainstream conservatives of the Popular Party (PP), a majority (35.4%) believes the years of the dictatorship were “good,” which is 4.5 percentage points more than those who believe they were “bad.” Among voters of the far-right Vox — whose leader Santiago Abascal has stated in Congress that Spain’s current leftist administration is worse than the Franco dictatorship — the percentage of those who believe those years were good rises to 42%. The perception about this historical period marked by a lack of freedoms changes radically depending on the voter’s political affiliation. Thus, the gap between Socialist voters and Vox voters who consider the Franco years to have been “very bad” is 58.2 points.

By age, almost 20% of young people between 18 and 24 years old, who did not personally live through the dictatorship, believe it was “good” or “very good.” These percentages vary according to age: 15.9% in the 25-to-34 bracket view Francoism positively; so do 18.5% of those aged 35 to 44; 20.6% among those aged 45 to 54; 24.5% in the 55-to-64 group; 22.6% in the 65-to-74 group; and up to 25.8% of those over 75 rate it positively, although the majority overall believe it was bad or very bad.

A Vox lawmaker,Manuel Mariscal, said in Congress in November that “thanks to social media, a lot of youths are discovering that the period following the Civil War (1936-1939) was not one of darkness, but of progress and reconciliation to achieve national unity.”

[EL PAÍS English]