<P><B> Francisco Franco is the most important and controversial figure in the emergence of modern Spain </B></P> <UL><LI> How did Franco rise to power and of what use did he make of it? </LI> <LI> Examines the formative influences on Franco. </LI> <LI> Traces his vision for Spain and his success or failure at realizing it. </LI></UL><P>Francisco Franco was a military man before all else. His supporters said that his handling of politics was that of a brilliant strategist, his detractors that he ran Spain as if it were a barracks. He remains a deeply divisive figure, and his contribution, for good or ill, to the emergence of modern Spain is still intensely controversial. <I>Franco</I> is an excellent account of the Generalissimo's rise to power and his four decades as autocratic Head of State in Spain. Set in the context of the social, economic and political evolution of twentieth-century Spain, Sheelagh Ellwood assesses his career, through the Civil War and his forty years of supreme power, and reveals the personal characteristics that enabled Franco to take advantage of those circumstances. <I>Franco</I>, in the <I>Profiles in Power</I> series, is not a biography, though inevitably it contains much biographical material, it instead analyzes the major features, achievements and failures of Franco's career. </P><P> <B>Sheelagh Elwood</B> is research analysis for the Iberian Peninsula in the Research and Analysis Department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London.