The remains of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, who ruled the country from 1939 to 1975, were reburied on Thursday
MADRID (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th October, 2019) The remains of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, who ruled the country from 1939 to 1975, were reburied on Thursday.The exhumation ceremony at the basilica in the Valley of the Fallen, where the dictator was buried after his death in 1975, began at 10.30 a.m. local time (08.30 GMT). It was attended by the late dictator's relatives � grandchildren, their wives and great-grandchildren � a total of 22 people. Additionally, acting Minister of Justice Dolores Delgado, several government officials and a medical examiner were also present. Father Santiago Cantera, who had opposed the reburial, uttered a prayer.
At 12.58 local time, the relatives carried the coffin from the basilica on their shoulders and loaded it into a helicopter for further transfer to the Mingorrubio El Pardo cemetery near Madrid. Here, in the family crypt, lies the dictator's wife, Carmen Polo, who died in 1988. The royal palace in El Pardo was Franco's official residence during his reign.
After that, the coffin was again placed on a hearse and brought to the cemetery gate.
The ceremony was held with increased security measures. The entrance to the cemetery was closed to visitors and journalists, and walkthrough archway detectors were installed, so that even relatives could not take pictures or video of the ceremony. In total, about 20 Franco heirs arrived at the exhumation procedure in the Valley of the Fallen and the inhumation in Mingorrubio.
Near the cemetery, about 200 Franco supporters gathered to express their disagreement with the government's decision to rebury him. They shouted "Franco! Franco!" "Long live Spain!" and "Get up Spain!" which was the slogan of the Falange, the only legal party in Spain during the dictatorship.
Despite the police on duty, minor clashes erupted.
After leaving the cemetery, the Franco family issued a statement accusing the government that decided to rebury Franco of "violating their fundamental rights," calling the events a "media circus," and also stated that the government's goal was to boost electoral support.
Acting Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez made a special appeal to citizens, in which he called the reburial of the dictator from the Valley of the Fallen as "a step towards reconciliation" of the country. According to him, the grave of the dictator in the mausoleum was an "anomaly," "anachronism" and an "insult to Spanish democracy."
Acting Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo said that despite the "importance of removing Franco from the Valley of the Fallen" much remains to be done, because Spain is the second country in the world in terms of the number of missing people. The country ranks second in the world after Cambodia in the number of unidentified victims of wars and dictatorships. According to various sources, this count ranges from 30,000 to 143,000 people.
The exhumation was one of the first decisions Pedro Sanchez's socialist government made after coming to power in June 2018. In August of that year, the government adopted a decree that amended the 2007 law on historical memory to say that the Valley of the Fallen memorial monument should only house the remains of people who died in the Spanish Civil War and not those of the late dictator, whose government oversaw thousands of executions.
The Franco family opposed the measure and proposed, as the only alternative, that the remains be moved to the crypt of Madrid's Almudena Cathedral, where the dictator's daughter and son-in-law are buried. The authorities refused this option, as the crypt is located in the very center of Madrid, some 200 yards from the Royal Palace, and authorities feared that it would become a "new place of worship for the dictator" and would "endanger public order" in one of the most attractive tourist destinations in the Spanish capital.
As a result, the authorities decided to rebury Franco at the El Pardo cemetery alongside his late wife. In June, a few days before the planned exhumation, the Supreme Court agreed to postpone it until a decision is reached on the merits of the Franco family's lawsuit against the reburial. The judges dismissed the lawsuit unanimously on September 24. On October 10, the Supreme Court removed the last legal obstacles to exhumation.
According to Franco's plan, the Valley of the Fallen memorial, opened two decades after the end of the fratricidal Civil War (1936-1939), was intended to become a place of reconciliation of Spain.
Its construction began in 1940 and lasted 18 years, involving 20,000 people and thousands of political prisoners. According to official figures, 15 people died during the construction, but it is unknown how many people died from the consequences of hard work. Bodies from mass graves from all over Spain were brought here from 1959 until 1983. Franco was buried here after his death in 1975, next to the altar in the basilica, under a 3,300-pound slab, opposite the grave of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of the Spanish Falange. The dictator was buried with state honors.
As many as 33,833 people rest in the Valley. Among them are both those who fought on the side of the Republicans and on the side of the Francoists. A third of them � 12,410 bodies � were never identified.
The exact number of victims of the war has not yet been established and is estimated from 450,000 to 600,000 people. As many as 270,000 were taken prisoner, 192,000 of them were shot by the Francoists. After the war, 50,000 people were killed and another 500,000 became refugees.
