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Divided over dictator, Spain to exhume Franco's remains

24 October 2019 16:16 (UTC +04:00)

Spanish authorities finalised preparations on Thursday morning to remove General Francisco Franco’s remains from a state mausoleum, seeking to exorcise the ghost of a dictator whose legacy still divides the country more than four decades after his death, APA reports citing Reuters Madrid.

Amid tight security and in virtual secrecy, his coffin is to be taken from the Valley of the Fallen and reburied in a private family vault.

“It’s intensely symbolic for Spain,” said political scientist Pablo Simon, “because the (Franco) monument has always been connected to those who miss the old regime.”

The exhumation ceremony is due to begin at 10:30 local time (0830 GMT) and, with media barred from witnessing it, will be attended by a select few: Justice Minister Dolores Delgado, a forensics expert, a priest, and 22 of Franco’s descendants.

They include his oldest grandson Francisco Franco, who labeled the operation - and its low-key nature - a political ploy by the governing Socialist Party.

A Spanish Franco-era flag hung outside his home in Madrid’s embassy district on Thursday as the relatives converged on the valley before being transported to the Mingorrubio cemetery north of Madrid where the dictator is to be reburied.

“I feel a great deal of rage because they have used something as cowardly as digging up a corpse, using a body as propaganda and political publicity to win a handful of votes before an election,” his grandson told Reuters.

Franco led nationalist rebels backed by Hitler and Mussolini to victory in the 1936-39 civil war which killed around 500,000 people, then ruled Spain in autocratic fashion until his death in 1975. Democracy returned to Spain in the following years, a period known as the Transition.

In government since mid-2018 and facing a national election next month, the Socialists have long sought to exhume his remains from the Valley of the Fallen, a huge monument built on Franco’s orders and which contains the remains of combatants form both sides of the war.

The Socialists won backing for the decision to move his remains from a divided parliament and the Supreme Court ratified it last month after dismissing a challenge from Franco’s descendents.

The government estimates the move will cost up to 63,000 euros ($70,000).

“Exhuming the dictator’s body suggests that the Valley of the Fallen’s significance could be reclaimed, a normal process within democracies like ours,” Simon said.