Spain exhumes Gen. Franco’s remains, opening new chapter
MADRID — Turning a momentous page in its history, Spain on Thursday exhumed the remains of dictator Gen. Francisco Franco from his grandiose mausoleum outside Madrid and reburied them in a small family crypt north of the capital.
The daylong operation featured Franco’s coffin being flown by helicopter to its new resting place, and the event was broadcast live on television and watched closely across the country. Large parts of the ceremony were carried out in private, however.
Spain’s Socialist government was behind the decision to move the autocrat’s remains, saying it wanted to settle a long-standing debt to the nation’s victims.
Many in Spain considered the vainglorious Valley of the Fallen mausoleum, which Franco had built for his tomb, to be an insult to the hundreds of thousands of people who died in Spain’s 1936-39 Civil War, which Franco’s forces won, and to those who suffered persecution under his near-four-decade regime.
The gargantuan shrine exalting a dictator was also considered a smear on Spain’s standing as a modern democratic state.
Many of Franco’s victims are buried in unmarked graves in the same mausoleum.
In a statement, Franco’s grandchildren said, “the government, aided by other powers of the state and the Church’s hierarchy, has completed the profanation of the sepulcher of our grandfather ..., gravely violating our basic rights.
“What the government presents as a ‘victory of democracy’ is no more than a shameless media circus only seeking propaganda and electoral gains,” they added.