Franco had one ball: Official

Monorchic European dictators: Part II

By Lester Haines • Get more from this author

Posted in Bootnotes, 18th May 2009 13:17 GMT

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It's becoming increasingly evident that a prerequisite for establishing a European dictatorship is that the candidate surrender a testicle in the heat of battle.

Following last year's revelation that Hitler lost a 'nad in 1916 during the Battle of the Somme, a historian has now claimed that Franco was similarly monorchic - the result of a lower abdomen injury sustained "defending the former Spanish protectorate of Ceuta" in Morocco, also in 1916.

That's according to Jose Maria Zavala, who got the low-down from Dr Ana Puigvert, whose grandfather Antonio Puigvert was an urologist "known to have had Franco as a patient", as the BBC puts it.

Franco apparently confided in grandad Puigvert that he boasted "only one testicle", although this didn't prevent him fathering a daughter, Carmen Franco y Polo, in 1926.

Followers of unitesticular dictators are doubtless wondering when to expect confirmation that Mussolini was not packing a full scrotum. Spookily, Il Duce was also wounded on active service when a mortar bomb explosion put an end to his military career in 1917.

The blast peppered Mussolini with 40 pieces of shrapnel, so it's a fair bet that it may have done for one of his Italian plums. ®

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