Spain’s government has pledged to exhume Francisco Franco from his mausoleum. As The Local Spain understood, the dictator’s family has only 15 days to make the final decision regarding the changing of the grave site.
Dolores Delgado confirmed on Friday that the opulent mausoleum of dictator Franco in Valley of the Fallen near Madrid will be empty in two weeks. The Spanish government approved a reburial and informed Franco family formally. The cabinet gave its final green light to the exhumation, before giving his family the ultimatum.
According to the justice minister, Franco’s descendants have to find a place for reburial until mid-March.
“The family has been granted a 15-day period to decide where it wants to bury the remains of the dictator,” Dolores Delgado told press.
Fransico Franco ruled Spain from 1939 to his death in 1975, he left many controversial memories about his era and himself. In fact, Spaniards doesn’t like to remember Franco times when they have to live with no basic freedoms. The former dictator’s reburial issue family doesn’t agree on a site or remain silent, the government will choose the reburial site itself, Ms Delgado said.
The descendants, however, will be able to appeal this at the Supreme Court, which would delay the exhumation.
The opulent Franco mausoleum could be empty this year
The idea of reburial comes just hours after Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, in power for just over eight months, called early general elections for April 28 after the parliament rejected his 2019 draft budget.
The National Francisco Franco Foundation, which aims to keep a memory of the dictator alive, said Friday that it would appeal the government’s decision to move the former Spanish leader’s remains, taking the matter to the Supreme Court.
The Foundation, in a statement, spoke of multiple illegalities and “arbitrary decisions” by the socialist government, which it said has “electoral objectives and is unmoved by the wider interests and common good of the Spanish people”.
