Heirs of Franco fight state over dictator’s mock castle retreat

THE Spanish state yesterday clashed in court with the heirs of Francisco Franco over who should control a mock-castle used by the fascist dictator as a summer home.

Officials donated the manor house in Sada, near A Coruña, Galicia, as a retreat for Franco in 1938, when he was the leader of the Nationalists in the Civil War.

Spain’s Left-wing coalition government demanded its return last year, contending that the formal transfer of the site in 1941 was illegitimate. Franco’s family still enjoy use of the house.

On the first day of hearings expected to last a week, the court in A Coruña heard how the house, which was built between 1893 and 1907, was enlarged after taking in local smallholders’ land.

“My grandmother was kicked out of her home,” said 70-year-old Juan Pérez Babío. “She was pressured and had to leave her house, and that marked her for the rest of her life.”

During his two-year tenure, Pedro Sanchez, the socialist prime minister, has challenged lingering reverence for Franco, who ruled from 1939 to 1975, most notably by exhuming his body from a mausoleum for the war dead.

The house, Pazo de Merais, has long stoked controversy, with local campaigners arguing that the 16-acre property on the coast should have reverted to public ownership after the dictator’s death in 1975.

According to the Franco regime’s official account, the donation of the home was a mark of loyalty by the people of A Coruña to the general, who was born in nearby Ferrol. But historians claim that the leaders of A Coruña’s council and business community obliged locals to hand over a portion of their income to purchase the house. “There was nothing voluntary about the donations,” said Carlos Babío, co-author of a history of the house. “Money was taken from workers’ wages, and we are talking about practically the entire population of A Coruña in 1938.”

Key to the legal case is the question of whether any transfer of ownership took place. Spain’s heritage council contends that the bill of sale for Franco taking ownership in 1941 was a “fraud”. No money changed hands and upkeep was still paid for by the state. In 2018, Franco’s heirs tried to sell the house for €8million after local officials placed a protection order on it, deeming the site a place of special cultural interest.

The family has also clashed with the state over how to manage visitors, drawing criticism for allowing the Franco Foundation to run tours extolling the virtues of the dictator.

An estimated 100,000 people died during a campaign of repression by Franco’s regime during and after the Spanish Civil War.