Spain’s Socialist government plans to exhume Franco’s remains

RATHER than a war memorial, it is a monument to a victory. Francisco Franco, whose military rebellion against a turbulent parliamentary republic triggered the Spanish civil war and his 36-year dictatorship, conceived of the Valley of the Fallen as a place to pay tribute to those who died for what he called his “Crusade”. Erected over 19 years, using forced labour, it is designed to inspire fear rather than sorrow. Its massive cross on a rocky outcrop in the foothills of the Sierra de Guadarrama is visible from the outskirts of Madrid, and its basilica is a cold vault bored 250 metres into the mountainside. It contains the remains of 33,847 dead from both sides in the war. Only two graves, both in the basilica’s transept, are named: those of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of Spain’s fascist party, and Franco himself.

In a vibrant democracy, the site has become an aberration. Last year parliament approved a resolution sponsored by the Socialists and supported by all parties except the conservative People’s Party (PP) and a Catalan party to move Franco’s remains, rebury Primo de Rivera in a less prominent place and “resignify” the Valley as a democratic memorial. Having unexpectedly ousted the PP from government by means of a censure motion in May, Pedro Sánchez, the new Socialist prime minister, is poised to act on the resolution. Franco’s remains will be exhumed “in a very short space of time”, he told parliament on July 17th.

Only a few diehard franquistas actively oppose Mr Sánchez’s decision. Several hundred of them staged a protest at the Valley recently. But the PP is discomfited by the issue. Many of its voters are over 60; they grew up in the latter decades of Franco’s rule which, while still repressive, saw growing economic prosperity and the creation of a middle class. And many families have forebears who were on opposing sides in the war.

“Our democracy will have symbols that unite citizens,” Mr Sánchez promised. That is a worthy aim. To achieve it, the Socialists should restrain their desire to set up a “Truth Commission” about a war that ended almost 80 years ago, or turn the Valley into a “museum of memory”, which will doubtless be the version imagined only by one side. Far better to make it a simple national war memorial, help those who still don’t know what happened to relatives killed in the war and repression, or where they are buried—and leave the rest to the historians.