Spain approves plan to dig up former dictator Franco

Spain’s centre-left government says it has approved legal amendments ensuring the remains of former dictator General Francisco Franco will be dug up and removed from a controversial mausoleum.

Deputy prime minister Carmen Calvo said the minority Socialist government is certain that parliament will endorse the decision, probably next month.

The amendments to Spain’s Historical Memory Law of 2007 grant the government power to exhume Franco’s body.

That change aims to thwart legal efforts by Franco’s descendants and supporters to block the exhumation.

Removing the remains from the Valley of the Fallen, a mausoleum Franco ordered built 30 miles north west of Madrid, would be a momentous event in Spain which still bears social and political scars from the 1936-39 civil war.

The vast Valley of the Fallen complex is the most conspicuous public legacy of Franco’s rule. It was built as a tribute to those killed in the civil war when he deposed Spain’s democratic government in what he called his “glorious crusade”.

Some 34,000 people from both sides 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,” Ms Calvo said. She noted that a visiting UN delegation said four years ago that “democracy is incompatible with a tomb which honours the memory of Franco”.

The Memory Law, which outlawed public events supporting the Franco regime, fell short of addressing the broad demands of civil war survivors and victims’ relatives for exhumations and reparations.

Franco’s descendants will be consulted and will have 15 days to say where they would like the remains to be placed after exhumation. If they do not reply, the government will choose a “dignified place”, Ms Calvo said after the government’s weekly cabinet meeting.

Francisco Martinez-Bordiu, a grandson of Franco, described the exhumation plans as “barbaric”, telling Antena 3 that descendants would assess legal options for halting it.

An exhumation of Franco’s embalmed body — possibly as early as October — would cement the government’s reformist and liberal credentials after taking power last June.

Removing Franco from the mausoleum, which is owned and operated by the cultural heritage agency, a publicly funded body, has long been discussed in Spain.

Ms Calvo said the government is fast-tracking the exhumation because it wants to “end a state of affairs which cannot go on any longer”.

At next Friday’s cabinet meeting, detailed administrative procedures for the exhumation will be set out, she said.

The Valley of the Fallen complex includes a mausoleum and basilica in a neoclassic style and is a popular pilgrimage site for people who are nostalgic for the dictatorship.

It has a 500ft cross that can be seen from miles away.

Franco, who died in 1975, is in a tomb in the basilica’s central nave beneath a 1.5-metric ton tombstone.