I trust it won't be very difficult to send chanceries around Europe (in Germany and Italy especially) the announcements by Spain's Partido Popular (PP) and Ciudadanos (Cs) parties favouring general Francisco Franco. Because that's exactly what Pablo Casado and Albert Rivera's parties are prepared to do and communicate to public opinion by opposing the exhumation of the dictator's remains from the Valle de los Caídos. The masks are slowly coming off and it will be very interesting to see how they explain to Europe that what they're against is an executive order for it to happen immediately -man, you've got to have balls to go with the argument that the most important thing for Spaniards is their children's future and not Franco's bones- and that there's no rush, something in a way obvious, given that the dictator died in 1975, more than 42 years ago.
PP and Cs are taking dangerous steps backwards and competing in their efforts to whitewash Francoism. It makes it easier to understand Casado and Rivera's parties leaving a parliamentary plenary session in October 2013 to not have to vote on a bill presented by ICV condemning Francoism and Nazism. Years later they corrected this error and attributed it all to a misunderstanding and a parliamentary squabble. There certainly was one, but it served more than anything as an excuse. I mean, like all this about the executive order. Because there's only one headline: in favour of or against the exhumation.
All of this is happening in the middle of the commotion stirred up around the drafting of a document signed by hundreds of servicemen -now more than 700- praising the figure of Franco. It's not just any old story since it highlights the huge gaps in Spain's Transition to democracy and the influence in the barracks of this way of looking at things. Many of them are high-ranking soldiers and they've held posts of enormous responsibility until very recently. It's not an exaggeration, therefore, to wonder if those in their places today think the same as their predecessors and are only keeping quiet due to the positions they hold.
Right-wing parties whitewashing Francoism and soldiers praising Franco feed each other. Let Europe know! And take note.