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ARCHIVED - Remains of Spanish fascist leader to be exhumed
José Antonio Primo de Rivera’s remains will be relocated by his family before new law honouring victims of dictatorship comes into force
The family of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of Spain’s fascist Falange party, have been granted their request to exhume his remains from Madrid’s Valley of the Fallen cemetery where many fascist leaders from Spain’s dictatorship period are laid to rest.
This permission has been granted just before Spain’s new Historical Memory Law honouring victims of the civil war and subsequent dictatorship years would force the bodies to be removed from the controversial memorial site, which was built by slave labour under Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco.
The remains of Primo de Rivera, who was executed in prison in November 1936, has lain in the basilica of the Valley of the Fallen in 1959. The remains of Franco himself were removed from the site almost three years ago.
The Law of Historical Memory, which was approved by Spain’s senate last week, intends to bring “justice, reparation and dignity” to Franco’s victims of and “redefine” the Valley of the Fallen by turning it into a civil cemetery and removing any traces of people who were involved in the dictatorship, or the coup d’état” so they don’t become pilgrimage sites for far-right supporters.Primo de Rivera’s descendants will rebury his remains “in holy ground and in accordance with Catholic rites”.
“The exhumation process should, and will, remain a strictly private family affair so that it doesn’t become a public spectacle that could lead to confrontations between Spaniards,” they said in a statement.
For their part, the Spanish government has thanked the family for its “willingness to proceed with the exhumation and comply with the law”.
The new law also aims to create a census and a national DNA bank in order to locate and identify the remains of the tens of thousands of people who still lie in unmarked graves in Spain.
What’s more, it will ban any groups or activities that may glorify the Franco regime, such as the renaming of Corvera Airport in Murcia to Juan de la Cierva International Airport.
The government hopes that the legislation will help “encourage a shared discussion based on the defence of peace, on pluralism and on broadening human rights and constitutional freedoms”. However, it was criticised by the Spanish right, with moderate conservatives accusing the government of trying to “rewrite history” and the far-right Vox party describing it as a “despicable and wretched attack” on Spain’s recent history.
Even 83 years on from the end of the civil war in Spain and 47 years after the death of Franco and the introduction of democracy to Spain – the only European nation that didn’t forcibly oust its fascist leader – the topic still has the power to generate controversy and rile people up.
Image 1: Wikimedia commons
Image 2: Archive
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