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Spain’s plan to exhume Franco revives memories of an unsettled past

2018-10-20 10:16:07       source:The Washington Post

October 19, 2018


On the jagged edge of a mountain outside the Spanish capital, a dictator lies in eternal repose, guarded by statues of militant angels beneath a soaring granite cross. But soon Francisco Franco may be roused from his slumber and his posthumous reign may end.


Spain’s new minority government, headed by Pedro Sánchez, a 46-year-old Socialist who was 3 when Franco died, has ordered the exhumation of the dictator’s bones. Some Spaniards see the move as long overdue, others as post facto revenge. Either way, the Sánchez government risks reviving divisions in a nation that, while generally untroubled by nostalgia for its authoritarian past, has never achieved consensus about its bloody civil war and decades of dictatorship.


The government is adamant that removing Franco from the Valley of the Fallen, a sprawling state-funded monument, is essential to dignify Spanish democracy.


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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/spains-plan-to-exhume-franco-digs-up-memories-of-an-unsettled-past/2018/10/18/3531e1b4-c0e9-11e8-9f4f-a1b7af255aa5_story.html?utm_term=.9af2d357a144