Spain might dig up Franco
Spain’s government issued a decree Friday allowing for the remains of former dictator Gen. Francisco Franco to be dug up and removed from a controversial national mausoleum honouring that nation’s civil war dead. He would be reburied at a place of his family’s choosing. The amendments to Spain’s Historical Memory Law of 2007 aim to thwart legal efforts by Franco’s descendants and supporters to block the exhumation in the courts.
MAUSOLEUM
Removing Franco’s remains from the Valley of the Fallen, a mausoleum he ordered built 50 kilometres northwest of Madrid, would be a momentous event in Spain, which still bears social and political scars from the country’s 1936-39 civil war. His flower-strewn tomb at the site has become a pilgrimage destination for Spaniards still harbouring sympathy for his fascist regime, which ruled for 36 years after defeating Republican forces in the war. Some 34,000 people from both sides of the fighting are buried at the site, most of them never identified. “Having Franco’s tomb (at the complex) shows a lack of respect ... for the victims buried there,” deputy prime minister Carmen Calvo said.
15 DAYS
Franco’s descendants will be consulted and will have 15 days to say where they would like the remains to go after exhumation. If they do not reply, the government will choose a “dignified place,” the deputy prime minister said. Francisco MartinezBordiu, a grandson of Franco, described the plan as “barbaric,” telling Antena 3 on Friday that descendants would assess their legal options for halting it.
BASILICA
Commissioned by Franco, the 262-metre basilica is longer than St. Peter’s in Rome and took 18 years to build. Its 150-metre-high cross towers from a rocky escarpment surrounded by pine, poplar and oak trees on the edge of the Guadarrama mountain range an hour’s drive northwest of Madrid.
Franco’s grave commands the central point in the basilica, under a mosaic dome on the far side of the altar from the tomb of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of Spain’s fascist movement known as the Falange.
Nowhere is opposition to Franco’s exhumation expressed more vehemently than here, where hundreds come to attend mass each Sunday. Mercedes Laso, 64, said the government was attempting to rewrite history.
“I don’t care either way about Franco but they should leave his remains alone,” Laso said. “They want to change the result of the civil war after having lost it.”
LEGACY
Extracting Franco’s remains from a memorial built using forced labour from 20,000 political prisoners brings to an end a 40-year struggle to come to terms with Franco’s legacy, said Alejandro Quiroga, a professor in Spanish history at Newcastle University in England. It represents another step in attempts to address the grievances of the families of an estimated 200,000 Spaniards who were killed for opposing his regime.
“There’s no doubt that this will at least normalize a situation that by European standards is abnormal and extraordinary,” Quiroga said.
The exhumation could occur as soon as October.