Spanish dictator’s body to be reburied

Spain’s government, which has pledged to exhume Francisco Franco from his opulent mausoleum, on Friday gave the late dictator’s family two weeks to decide on a reburial site, the justice minister said.

“The family has been granted a 15-day period to decide where it wants to bury the remains,” Dolores Delgado told reporters.

If the descendants of Franco, who ruled Spain from 1939 to his death in 1975, don’t agree on a site or remain silent, the government will choose the reburial site itself, she said.

The move comes just after Prime Minister hours Pedro Sanchez, in power for just over eight months, called early general elections for April 28 after the parliament rejected his 2019 draft budget.

His socialist executive had vowed to remove Franco’s remains from an imposing basilica in the Valle de los Caidos (Valley of the Fallen) near Madrid, which was built in part by political prisoners during his regime.

On Friday, the cabinet gave its final green light to the exhumation, before giving his family the ultimatum.

The family can appeal this at the Supreme Court, which would delay the exhumation. —AFP