For Greece, Spain and Portugal, ideological battles between left and right continued and the emergence of parliamentary democracy was troubled. Greece experienced Civil War, coup and counter-coup into the 1970s. Portugal, since the 1930s under a quasi-Fascist regime and among the poorest nations in Europe, fought a rearguard action against independence movements in its empire, until a 1974 coup. The last authoritarian dictatorship in Western Europe fell in 1975, when Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain, died. Franco had helped to modernize the country and improve the economy. His successor, King Juan Carlos, transformed the country into a constitutional monarchy. By 1980, all Western European nations were democracies.