Behind closed doors, Spain exhumes Franco's remains

Cries of “long live Franco!” accompanied the coffin of Francisco Franco on Thursday as Spain removed the remains of its former dictator from the state mausoleum where he was buried in 1975.

His exhumation and reburial is the most significant move in years by Spanish authorities to lay the ghost of the general whose legacy still divides the country he dominated for nearly four decades.

The ruling Socialist Party, which faces a national election next month, has long sought to move Franco’s remains from the huge monument, built on his orders and containing the remains of combatants from both sides of the 1936-39 civil war.

As crowds of media and onlookers gathered outside, Franco’s coffin was extracted from its tomb in the Valley of the Fallen in a ceremony witnessed only by relatives and a small group of officials.

The coffin was carried to a waiting hearse and then transferred to a helicopter for the short fight to a private family vault in the Mingorrubio cemetery north of Madrid, where Franco will be reburied next to his wife.

Members of his family had sought a court order to try to prevent the exhumation.

The reburial “should make us reflect on what it means for our country’s own image and for democracy,” said acting Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo.

“Young people should understand that we can never again be without democracy.”

Around 500,000 people were killed in the war between Franco’s nationalist rebels, backed by Hitler and Mussolini, and left-wing Republicans. Franco then ruled Spain as an autocrat until his death.

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