The National Francisco Franco Foundation has claimed in a statement that the dictator "in his role as head of state, neither executed anyone, nor sentenced anyone to death, rather the Justice system did".
This came as part of the Foundation's response to requests made in recent days for the organisation to be made illegal. "Sentences aren't decided by the head of state, rather by the Justice system", they say, adding that the Popular Front, on the republican side in the Civil War, carried out "dozens of thousands of executions" and that if this is the reason people are asking that they be banned then they consider that Manuel Azaña executed "each and every one of those executed by the Popular Front".
The Foundation maintains that one their defining characteristics is their defence of the "victims of the Popular Front" and believes that Franco offered the fallen of the Popular Front "the greatest dignity that was within his power, the possibility to sleep the eternal sleep alongside the fallen of Nationalist Spain".
"Behind the desire to eliminate the Foundation from public discourse are the same people that pursue, throw stones at and stop a perfectly legal bus," the organisation says. This is a reference to a campaign bus from the right-wing Catholic group Hazte Oír (Make yourself heard) considered to be transphobic by Madrid City Council and a number of LGBT+ organisations which was temporarily banned from the roads in July.