Pédro Sanchez's promise to exhume Francisco Franco took more than a year to be realised
AFTER DYING in his bed in 1975 General Francisco Franco, Spain’s dictator for 36 years, was buried in haste at the Valley of the Fallen, the grandiose monument on a mountainside outside Madrid that he built to celebrate his victory in the Spanish civil war. But his presence there, in one of only two named tombs amid 34,000 anonymous war dead, is now widely seen as an aberration.
“No enemy of democracy deserves a place of worship nor institutional respect,” Mr Sánchez said of the court ruling. “It’s a great victory for Spanish democracy”. More Spaniards agree with him than disagree. But the delay means the exhumation comes barely a fortnight before a general election, the fourth in as many years. The Socialists hope it will rally their faithful. Only Vox, a far-right party, actively opposes what it calls a “profanation” of Franco’s tomb.
The Socialists want to turn the Valley into “a museum of memory”. There is a risk in that of history once again being written by one side. Perhaps the best thing would be to deconsecrate the site and create a museum that explains what happened at the Valley itself. Franco’s dictatorship relied partly on forced labour to build it.
Modern Spain is not in thrall to Franco’s ghost. Most Spaniards have no memory of the dictator. Only an aging minority still regularly attend mass. But the lack of unanimity over the exhumation shows that the country has yet to agree on the past. Perhaps it never will."Digging up Franco"
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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