The founder of the Falange, a party that was one of the pillars of the Franco dictatorship in Spain, was exhumed Monday from the former mausoleum of Franco, an operation celebrated by the leftist government and marked by tensions between police and far right.
Once out of this monumental basilica carved into the rock and located not far from Madrid, the remains of José Antonio Primo de Rivera (1903-1936) were transferred to a more discreet place, the Madrid cemetery of San Isidro where are buried members of his family, noted an AFP photographer.
The funeral procession, carrying the remains and escorted by the police, arrived there around 11:30 GMT. About 200 far-right activists greeted him with a fascist salute and clashed with the many police officers present in brief scuffles.
Son of dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera, who ruled Spain from 1923 to 1930, the founder of the Falange was executed in November 1936, at the start of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) caused by the uprising of soldiers, including General Francisco Franco, against the elected Republican government.
Of fascist inspiration, the Falange was one of the pillars of the Franco regime along with the Catholic Church and the army.
This exhumation, three and a half years after that of Franco, stems from the entry into force in October of a flagship law of the left-wing government known as “Democratic Memory”, which aims, among other things, to make the former mausoleum a place of memory on this dark period.
“Today we take another step towards more dignity for our democracy,” said Education Minister and spokeswoman for the ruling Socialist Party, Pilar Alegría.
“Our institutions are finally faithful to the memory of our country and not to its oversights”, said for the part the number three of the government, the communist Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz.
Coming to power in 2018, Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez made the rehabilitation of victims of the Franco dictatorship (1939-1975) a priority.
After months of legal battle with Franco’s family, he managed in 2019 to have the remains of the “Caudillo” exhumed from the Valle de los Caídos (literally, “the valley of those who fell”) so that this mausoleum, without equivalent in other Western European countries that have experienced dictatorships, can no longer be a “place of apology” for Francoism.
Franco and Primo de Rivera had been buried there on either side of the altar of the basilica.
Ordered by Franco in 1940 to celebrate his “glorious Catholic Crusade” against the “Godless” Republicans, the construction by thousands of political prisoners of the Valle de los Caídos — renamed by the government “Valle de Cuelgamuros”, in reference to the name of the place– lasted nearly 20 years.
Overhung by a cross 150 meters high, this basilica is visible for tens of kilometers around.
Invoking “national reconciliation”, Franco had the bodies of more than 30,000 victims of the Civil War transferred there, Francoists, but also Republicans, taken from cemeteries and mass graves without their families being informed.
The remains of Republican victims claimed by their families must also be exhumed, but the procedure has been delayed amid a legal battle.
In November, the Spanish authorities had the remains of a Francoist military leader, General Queipo de Llano, exhumed from the Basilica of the Macarena in Seville.
This general is held responsible for the thousands of executions that occurred after the military uprising of 1936, the most famous being that of the poet Federico García Lorca.
The question of the memory of the Civil War and the dictatorship is still dividing in Spain, where the wounds of the past have not been healed and where the right accuses the left of reopening them and using this subject politically.
“They moved Franco, today they are moving Primo de Rivera (…) This government is obsessed with diverting attention from the problems of the Spaniards”, judged Borja Semper, the spokesman of the Popular Party (PP, right), accusing the executive of taking the Spaniards for “idiots”.
24/04/2023 17:22:51 – Madrid (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
