Dictator’s remains to be exhumed

EL PARDO, Spain — For visitors wondering why a tranquil cemetery outside Madrid suddenly needs aroundtheclock police security, the answer is simple: an empty burial space awaits the remains of Gen. Francisco Franco, who is being reunited with his wife 44 years after he died.

Weather permitting, the Spanish dictator’s preserved body will be flown Thursday by helicopter to the Franco family’s private chapel in the Mingorrubio cemetery. It’s a discrete site compared to the Valley of the Fallen, a vainglorious mausoleum and basilica that Franco built and where he was buried in 1975. The complex, which is topped by a 500foot granite cross that can be seen for miles, still remains a National Heritage site.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s interim centerleft government has meticulously planned Franco’s exhumation and reburial to be “simple, respectful and discreet but ensuring that the world sees how the dictator is no longer in a state tomb,” said a top Sanchez aide.

Sanchez fought a tortuous judicial and public relations battle to fulfill the desire of many in Spain who considered the mausoleum an affront to Franco’s victims and to the country’s standing as a modern European state.

At the Mingorrubio cemetery 35 miles from the old burial site, the dictator will lie surrounded by decrepit graves, most anonymous, of 34,000 people who died during and after the Spanish Civil War (193639) that pitched those who backed the democratic Republican government against Franco’s rebellious military Nationalists.