Spain digs up its troubling past as it moves Franco’s body from mausoleum
Turning a momentous page in its history, Spain yesterday exhumed the remains of dictator General Francisco Franco from his grandiose mausoleum outside Madrid and reburied them in a small family crypt north of the capital.
The day-long 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. However, large parts of the ceremony were carried out behind closed doors and in private.
Spain's Socialist Government was behind the decision to move the 20thcentury autocrat's remains, saying it wanted to settle a long-standing debt to its 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 subsequent near-fourdecade 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, which was carved out of a mountainside using convicts as part of the workforce, including political prisoners under Franco.
The exhumation and reburial will not put an end to Franco's legacy on the contemporary Spanish political scene, particularly as it comes just weeks ahead of a November 10 general election that is certain to see Spain's main parties of the left and right battling it out once again.
Who was Franco?
Franco ruled Spain between 1939 and 1975, after he and other officers led a military insurrection against the Spanish democratic Government in 1936, a move that started a three-year civil war.
A staunch Catholic, he viewed the war and ensuing dictatorship as something of a religious crusade against anarchist, leftist and secular tendencies in Spain.
His authoritarian rule, along with a profoundly conservative Catholic Church, ensured that Spain remained virtually isolated from political, industrial and cultural developments in Europe for nearly four decades.
The country returned to democracy three years after his death but his legacy and his place in Spanish political history still spark rancour and passion.
For many years, thousands of people commemorated the anniversary of his November 20, 1975, death in Madrid's central Plaza de Oriente esplanade and at the Valley of the Fallen mausoleum.
And although the dictator's popularity has waned immensely over the years, the exhumation has been criticised by Franco's relatives, Spain's three main right-wing parties and some members of the Catholic Church for opening old political wounds.
Why now?
The procedure was finally authorised by the Supreme Court in September when it dismissed a months-long legal bid by Franco's family to stop it.
The exhumation stemmed from amendments of a 2007 Historical Memory Law that aimed to seek redress for the estimated 100,000 victims of the civil war and the Franco era who were buried in unmarked graves, including thousands at the Valley of the Fallen. The legislation prohibited having Franco's remains in a public place that exalted him as a political figure.
Having been unable to press ahead with the move last year, Spain's interim Socialist Government of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez wanted the exhumation and reburial completed by next month's election, a move opposition parties said smacked of electioneering.
Who was allowed to attend?
While the Spanish and international press along with many others were keen to attend the exhumation, the Spanish Government insisted it was a private affair. The coffin was extracted from under marble slabs and two tonnes of granite at the mausoleum in a ceremony attended only by 22 Franco family members, government officials and workers.
A brief prayer was said in accordance with a request from Franco’s family before the coffin was carried out of the mausoleum by some of his grandchildren. It was then taken by an army helicopter to the Mingorrubio cemetery, 30km away.
Several hundred people, many waving Franco-era flags and symbols and chanting “Viva Franco”, gathered near the cemetery while police guarded the area.
Who will Franco rest alongside? Franco's relatives wanted to rebury him in Madrid's Almudena Cathedral, where they have a grave slot. But the Government feared it could become another pilgrimage site for fascists and insisted he be taken to the Mingorrubio cemetery where his wife, Carmen, is buried in a family crypt. The cemetery is close to the El Pardo palace, once Franco's official residence. The Mingorrubio site, much more modest than the Valley of the Fallen whose granite cross can be seen from miles around, is also the burial site for other right-wing figures, such as Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo and several ministers from the Franco regime.
Political impact
In normal times, the exhumation of Franco's remains would almost certainly boost the Socialist party's ratings, especially in the run-up to a general election. But the operation coincided with developments in a secessionist conflict in the northeastern region of Catalonia, which saw the sentencing of 12 former politicians and activists that sparked a week of protests and riots in Barcelona, Spain's second city and the Catalan capital.
Sanchez has been accused of going too easy on the pro-independence movement to curry parliamentary support. Both the Catalan issue and the Franco exhumation have breathed fresh life into Spanish nationalism and potentially rightwing parties at the election.