What to do with the remains of a dictator?
The Spanish parliament officially approved a measure to exhume the remains of the dictator Francisco Franco and move them from the Valley of the Fallen monument. But that one step won’t resolve the deep divisions in Spanish society over the legacy of the former dictator.
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What to do with Franco’s remains?
Spain’s Parliament voted earlier this month to exhume the remains of Francisco Franco, the country’s former dictator, fulfilling a promise that Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez made upon taking power earlier this year. Franco is buried in an elegant marble mausoleum in the Valley of the Fallen—a monument to the winning side in the Spanish Civil War that Franco himself designed and ordered built.
The vote in Spain’s Parliament was 176 in favor and just two against. But in a sign of how divisive Franco’s legacy still is in Spain, there were 165 abstentions. When you abstain, you decline to vote yes or no. So 165 members of the Spanish parliament decided not to vote either yes or no on this matter. The two members who voted “no” said they actually meant to abstain. There was, effectively, no opposition to the measure.
Francisco Franco was a general in the Spanish army and rose to power after he and a group of other army generals led a revolt against the elected government in 1936. The revolt turned into a three-year civil war, in which about 500,000 people died, among them soldiers and civilians. Franco then ruled Spain as a military dictator until his death in 1975. Under his rule, he repressed opposition, sentenced some of his opponents to forced labor in concentration camps, ordered others executed, and provided support to the Axis powers Germany and Italy in World War II. In later years, he pivoted and was more aligned with the western world and was a leading anti-Communist in the Cold War era. He also began to open Spain’s economy to outside trade and is often credited with presiding over an improving economy in his final decades in power.
Franco’s is an awkward legacy and one that continues to divide Spain to this day. He is currently buried in the basilica of the Valley of the Fallen, a large monument that officially honors those who fought and died in the Spanish Civil War. The grounds of the Valley of the Fallen are home to tens of thousands of soldiers in unmarked, mass graves—mostly those who fought on the side of Franco. The monument, and the towering 500-foot cross above it, were built by the forced labor of Franco’s political opponents.
The site attracts a quarter of a million people each year, many of whom hold a positive view of the ex-dictator. Their view is mostly that Franco was a benefactor of Spain; that he kept Spain officially out of World War II; and that he was responsible for economic prosperity in the years after the war.
Critics say, with justification, that the Valley of the Fallen is Europe’s only monument to a fascist dictator. There are no monuments to Adolph Hitler in Germany or Austria or to Benito Mussolini in Italy. He had, undoubtedly, an abysmal record on human rights: tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of his political opponents were imprisoned or killed. He governed against the liberal political and economic traditions that we now take for granted in the western world. There is no equivalent monument to the opponents of the Franco regime.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says he hopes that exhuming the remains of Franco and moving them away from this site will help Spain reconcile this part of its history. It would be the first step into making the monument a less one-sided place. The hope is that the Valley of the Fallen can become a place to commemorate and honor the victims of the war—a monument that doesn’t celebrate the dictatorship that followed the war. The Prime Minister has the support of his own Socialist party, another left-wing party called Podemos, and some smaller parties in the Spanish government.
What would be done with the remains of the dictator? A natural place would be near his wife in a cemetery near Madrid. They want the transfer to be done by the end of the year.
I have to admit that when I was researching this article, I had to Google the question, “Who still supports Franco?” because I just couldn’t imagine that position—but then again, I am not Spanish. I did at least find the answer to that question. I imagine some of the themes of this episode might sound familiar to some of you in Chile or Brazil, which have had military dictatorships in the last fifty years or so.
I want to say hi to a couple of listeners. First, Roberto from Mexico has been with us since about episode 80. Roberto is in business consulting, just like me, and he uses English at work. He’s now going back in time and listening to past episodes; he’s already in the 30s. So that’s dedication – it’s very methodical to go one by one; very analytical, left-brained like business consultants tend to be. That’s what I would do. I would go one by one back in time; I know others of you like to skip around by topic. The good news is the web site lets you do both. You can explore the topics on the top menu or just go back in time. You can always get to the next episode by using the URL for the episode number.
Also want to say hi to Melanie who’s listening from Germany. She’s working on perfecting her pronunciation and mastery of English expressions—all those pesky expressions we have. Melanie’s got a presentation coming up at work in English—so good luck on that.
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