Spanish churches hold mass for Franco
MADRID • Forty years after the death of General Francisco Franco, churches across Spain are holding special masses in homage to the military dictator, drawing strident criticism from relations of the hundreds of thousands of people who were killed or disappeared during his 36-year-rule.
Starting on Wednesday and continuing through today’s anniversary of the dictator’s death, at least 16 Catholic churches across the country were due to hold services in Franco’s honour, including the basilica at the Valley of the Fallen, where the man many still refer to as the Generalissimo is buried in a monumental tomb built by political prisoners.
To the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, which campaigns for the exhumation of the more than 100,000 victims of fascist violence who remain in mass graves, today’s anniversary simply signifies “40 years without justice for the victims of Francoism”.
“I ’m indignant that churches are holding mass for Franco. There are children and old people in great need, and the money spent on those services should be used for them,” said Nieves Alvarez, who, thanks to the work of volunteers, has been able to recover the remains of her grandfather, who was executed in one of Franco’s prisons after the war. A 61-year-old widow from Madrid who considers herself to be a Christian, Alvarez described the people who feel the need to pay homage to Franco as “fanatics”.
One of those who will be praying for Franco at the Valley of the Fallen basilica today will be Jaime Alonso, the vice-president of the Francisco Franco Foundation. Apart from crediting the general with saving Spain from the ills of communism and bringing about an economic transformation in the Fifties and Sixties, Alonso claims that those who criticize the dictator today owe the freedom to express their views to Franco. “Spain’s democracy has many flaws but the biggest of them all is not accepting history as it occurred. It was Franco who brought democracy, a democracy which is very stable and enjoys a high level of public participation,” said Alonso.
A luxury international hotel group has also come under fire over a planned tribute dinner in Madrid organized by the Franco Foundation on Dec 3, when an expected 500 people will mark the 123rd anniversary of the military leader’s birth.
Cristina Cifuentes, Madrid’s regional premier from the conservative Popular Party, said she did not approve of the homage to be held at Hotel Melia Castilla,
IT WAS FRANCO WHO BROUGHT DEMOCRACY, A DEMOCRACY WHICH IS VERY STABLE.
but she could not stop it from taking place.
Baltasar Garzon, the Spanish judge who attempted to catalogue Franco’s crimes and offer justice to relations before he was overruled by Spain’s supreme court, presented a written demand to the Spanish government for Franco to be removed from his Valley of the Fallen mausoleum and that the state apologize to victims.
The rulings made by Franco’s courts have never been stripped of their validity and Spain’s 1977 amnesty law has prevented any Franco-era officials from being tried for human rights abuses.