The Spanish government will be able to exhume former dictator Francisco Franco from the Valley of the Fallen monument, and take his remains to El Pardo-Mingorrubio cemetery. That’s according to a ruling today by the Supreme Court, which gives the green light to one of the star policies of the Socialist Party (PSOE) government of caretaker Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
In a unanimous ruling, the judges from Spain’s top court dismissed the appeal filed by, among others, the grandchildren of Franco, who are bitterly opposed to the PSOE’s plans. They wanted their grandfather to be left where he was, or if he had to be moved, to be taken to the family crypt in La Almudena cathedral in central Madrid. This would have presented a major headache for both the government and the authorities, given the cathedral’s location in one of the capital city’s tourist hotspots.
The caretaker government has been awaiting this ruling with baited breath. Sánchez’s closest advisors have spent huge amounts of time and effort to make the exhumation a reality, but have constantly come up against judicial rulings and appeals from the family, as well as unforeseen issues with the Spanish Catholic Church.
The executive managed to secure final approval for the operation on June 10 of this year, but the Supreme Court froze the plan until it had definitively ruled on the appeal, which was filed by the Franco family as well as three other collectives: the Francisco Franco Foundation, the Benedictine community in Cuelgamuros (where the Valley of the Fallen is located), and the Association in Defense of the Valley of the Fallen. The Supreme Court based this decision on the need to avoid irreparable damage to the appellants should the appeal be upheld and the remains of Franco had to be returned to the monument.
The plan to exhume Franco was one of the first announced by Sánchez when he came to power in the summer of 2018. Spain is headed to another general election in November 10, the fourth in four years, but the caretaker government may be able to transfer Franco’s remains before Spaniards return to the polls.
Now that the caretaker government has the blessing of the courts, it simply needs authorization from the Church to enter the basilica at the Valley of the Fallen and exhume the remains. All of the other administrative arrangements have been made.
The worst-case scenario for the government would have been a ruling that insisted that Franco be reburied at La Almudena. According to government sources, there would have been no choice but to comply with the decision, but this would have caused a number of issues – not least the fact that Franco would have become the only fascist leader from a major European country who was buried in a cathedral.
English version by Simon Hunter.
Valley of the Fallen
The 13.6-square kilometer Valley of the Fallen site remains hotly contested in a country still struggling to come to terms with the legacy of the fascist dictatorship of Franco, who was the Spanish head of state from the end of the Civil War in 1939 to his death in 1975.
The site was ostensibly built to commemorate all of the victims on both sides of Spain’s bitter and bloody Civil War (1936-1939), and the unmarked remains of more than 33,000 victims of the conflict lie there. But critics point out that the Valley of the Fallen, which features a basilica and a 150-meter-high cross that dominates the surrounding countryside, contains just two marked graves: those of Franco himself and José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of the Falange, Spain’s fascist-inspired political party. At the same time, thousands of prisoners of war who fought against Franco in the civil conflict were among the workforce used in its construction.