It seems that the dictator is to be dug up after all. Spain's Supreme Court has decided this Tuesday to back the line taken by Pedro Sánchez's cabinet and has given the green light to the exhumation of Francisco Franco from its controversial location in the Valle de los Caídos civil war memorial. The six judges of the Supreme Court administrative disputes chamber completely rejected the appeal filed by the dictator's family. The Spanish government's plans to remove the remains of the country's murderous twentieth century dictator from the mausoleum have thus been judged as legally valid and Franco's body will be transferred to the cemetery of El Pardo-Mingorrubio, on the outskirts of Madrid. Court sources state that the decision was taken unanimously. However, there is still a legal process relating to the matter open in a Madrid court: an application for urban planning permission.
The Supreme Court needed only an hour to resolve the matter on Tuesday. Among the judges there were no discrepancies with the argument that the transfer of the dictator's body was supported by Spain's Law of Historical Memory. Instead, there was debate about the new burial place. Franco's grandchildren had demanded that his remains should be taken to the Almudena Cathedral, in the centre of Madrid. In the end, the country's high court backed the Spanish government's plan for the new grave to be located in El Pardo, where the dictator's wife, Carmen Polo, is also buried.
According to court sources, Pablo Lugo Murillo de la Cueva, the reporting judge for the case, arrived at the hearing with a draft which had already been accepted by the other five members of the court. At present, only the bare decision of the court is known, with the legal arguments used to justify still to be released.
But not all obstacles have been overcome. Now a judge in a lower-level Madrid administrative disputes court, José Yusti Bastarreche, has to decide whether to maintain an urgent injunction that has paralyzed the building permit for the lifting of the slab that covers the dictator's remains. The hearing on this matter is scheduled for the end of October. It is the last barrier which the Spanish government has to overcome, in its quest to move the corpse before the election campaign begins on November 1st. The cabinet will have to decide on an exact date. Today's decision was a victory for Pedro Sánchez.
"Neither the Valley or the Almudena"
While the Supreme Court judges deliberated, members of several historical memory groups gathered outside the court to await the decision. Their demand was that the body of the dictator should not remain in the "Valley of the Fallen", the mausoleum in the mountains northwest of Madrid, but neither for it to be moved to the Almudena, as the family wanted. A spokesperson for the organizations also denounced the "Francoist" character which the Spanish state still possesses, specifically criticizing the Bourbon monarchy and the Spanish judicial system.
The exhumation had previously been scheduled for June 10th this year, but a week beforehand, the Supreme Court stopped the countdown. At its meeting on June 4th, the court unanimously accepted the precautionary injunction requested by the dictator's family, pending resolution of the appeal they had filed. This is what the judges debated today. This appeal was the Sánchez government's last major obstacle in its pledge to remove Franco from the Valle de los Caidos, an objective that the socialists announced in August 2018, not long after they came to power in a vote of no-confidence against Mariano Rajoy.