MADRID — Turning a momentous page in its history, Spain on Thursday exhumed the remains of dictator Gen. Francisco Franco from his grandiose mausoleum outside Madrid and reburied them in a small family crypt north of the capital.
The day-long operation featured Franco’s coffin being flown by helicopter to its new resting place, and the event was broadcast live on television and watched closely across the country. Large parts of the ceremony were carried out behind closed doors and in private, however.
Spain’s Socialist government was behind the decision to move the 20th-century autocrat’s remains, saying it wanted to settle a long-standing debt to its victims.
Many in Spain considered the vainglorious Valley of the Fallen mausoleum, which Franco had built for his tomb, to be an insult to the hundreds of thousands of people who died in Spain’s 1936-39 Civil War, which Franco’s forces won, and to those who suffered persecution under his subsequent near-four-decade regime.
The gargantuan shrine exalting a dictator was also considered a smear on Spain’s standing as a modern democratic state.
Many of Franco’s victims are buried in unmarked graves in the same mausoleum, which was carved out of a mountainside using convicts as part of the workforce, including political prisoners under Franco.
In a rigorously-planned operation, the coffin was extracted from under marble slabs and two tons of granite at the mausoleum in a ceremony attended only by 22 Franco family members, government officials and workers.
A brief prayer was said in accordance with a request from Franco’s family before the coffin was carried out of the mausoleum by some of his grandchildren. It was then taken by an army helicopter to the Mingorrubio cemetery, 20 miles away, where Franco’s wife is buried.
Several hundred people, many waving Franco-era flags and symbols and chanting “Viva Franco,” gathered near the cemetery while police guarded the area. At one point, several of them extended their arms in fascist salutes and sang “Cara al Sol” (Facing the Sun), the Spanish fascist anthem.
The private reburial service was over by mid-afternoon and only a handful of people remained outside the cemetery praying.
