It is very likely that Spain has never spoken so much about Franco at any time since the weeks after the dictator's death. There is currently talk about the exhumation of his remains from the Valle de los Caídos, we hear about retired military officers publishing manifestos defending the dictator as a military figure and justifying his coup d'état in 1936. And we are informed via a deliberate leak, as if we were still in the years of the transition, that in the military, people are not happy. The European press has discovered, with a degree of shock, that the Franco regime is more present in Spanish daily life than it seemed. There is a Francisco Franco Foundation which is fully legal, there is a thing called the dukedom of Franco which still exists and Francoist symbology is used freely.
Nobody can imagine anything similar to this in another country, but the fact is that old habits die hard especially when they are closely tied to key institutions. Perhaps that is the way to understand why it has taken the defence ministry led by Margarita Robles almost three weeks to open an investigation into the five officers in the army reserve, connected professionally with the department, who appear among the 181 retired soldiers who in July signed a manifesto called "Declaration of respect and rectification for general Francisco Franco Bahamonde, soldier of Spain."
Coincidence or not, this happened just after one of the star policy announcements of Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez: the exhumation of Franco from the Valle de los Caídos. A firm decision, which in June was going to be implemented within weeks, and surely before August. Now there is no longer a date set, although the original commitment is still maintained. At the same time as all this, you have to rub your eyes to understand that the Spanish ministry of defence has had to issue a statement disowning the manifesto that generals, colonels, admirals, naval captains, soldiers involved in the 1981 attempted coup have signed. One of the signatories was, until 2016, the head of personnel for Spain's land army.
It is not surprising that, after this glorification of the dictator, the defence ministry has had to stress "the absolute commitment of all the men and women that form the Spanish armed forces to their constitution and the values that are contained therein". Perhaps it was also a lie that the task of democratizing the Spanish armed forces was, as the official story says, fully completed. Perhaps there is still a lot to be taught in the military academies.