Spain moves to exhume Franco from monument he had built
MADRID — The Spanish Parliament voted Thursday to exhume the remains of Francisco Franco, the former dictator, from the underground basilica that he had built near Madrid, intensifying a debate over his legacy that continues 43 years after his death.
The vote paves the way for the body to be moved before the end of the year, but it will not end disagreements about Franco’s place in history, nor will it resolve the question of what to do with his burial site, known as the Valley of the Fallen.
Franco had the site built, in part with forced labor, to honor those who “fell for God and Spain” in the Spanish Civil War, and it became one of Europe’s largest mass graves, with the remains of at least 33,000 people. Most had fought for Franco in the war, which lasted from 1936-39, but the monument also contains the bones of many of his Republican opponents, dumped there in anonymity.
“There is neither respect, nor honor, nor justice, nor peace, nor concord as long as the remains of Franco are kept in the same place as the victims,” Carmen Calvo, the deputy prime minister, said in Parliament before the vote. “A dictator cannot be exalted: that is the summary of this debate.”
Parliament approved the exhumation, 172-2, with 164 abstentions, and the two who voted against were reported to have done so in error. The two main center-right opposition parties refused to take part in the vote, and the conservative Popular Party plans to appeal the decision before the Constitutional Court, arguing that Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez unjustifiably fast-tracked the measure.
Sánchez, a Socialist, promised the exhumation soon after becoming prime minister in early June, having ousted Mariano Rajoy and his Popular Party from power in an unexpected vote of no confidence in Parliament. It is not clear where Franco’s body would be reburied.
The debate has also heightened public interest in the Valley, which welcomed more than 60,000 visitors in August, a monthly record. Among them were people who came to pay homage to the dictator and to give a fascist salute before his tomb.
A small association called Movement for Spain has called on citizens to protest the exhumation.
On the other hand, a few hundred people have gathered weekly in Madrid to urge the new government to give greater recognition to the victims of Franco, in accordance with the Law of Historical Memory that was approved in 2007, under a previous Socialist government.
Sánchez has promised to revive the law, which had been deprived of state funding under Rajoy’s conservative government. One of the measure’s main goals is to help finance the opening of more than 2,000 mass graves across Spain, which date from the civil war.
Shortly after winning the civil war, Franco ordered the construction of the immense basilica of the Valley of the Fallen to be carved into a mountainside northwest of Madrid. Construction lasted 18 years, with Republican prisoners among the labor force. The basilica is now run by Benedictine priests who live in an adjacent abbey.