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TEHRAN, August 24 -Spain's government has issued a decree, allowing the removal of the remains of dictator Francisco Franco from a vast mausoleum in the "Valley of the Fallen" site near Madrid.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) -The decree, which was passed on Friday, reduces the risk of legal claims, including from the dictator's family, preventing exhumation.
"We are celebrating 40 years of a democratic Spain, of a stable and mature constitutional order... and this is not compatible with a public tomb where we continue to glorify Franco," Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo said at a press conference in Madrid on Friday.
Franco, who ruled Spain from the end of the country's 1936-39 civil war until his death in 1975, is buried in the Valley of the Fallen site, marked by a 152-meter (500-foot) cross on a mountainside, just 50 kilometers (30 miles) outside the Spanish capital. The monument also contains the remains of nearly 37,000 dead from both sides of the civil war, which split the nation in two and was triggered by Franco's rebellion against an elected Republican government.
"Only the mortal remains of people who died as a result of the Spanish Civil War will lie in the Valley of the Fallen," Calvo said.
The exhumation of Franco's remains could take place at the end of the year, she added. "We can't lose a single minute."
Pedro Sanchez, who took over as Spain’s prime minister in June after he ousted his conservative predecessor in a confidence vote, has made removing the late dictator's remains one of his priorities.
"A country looking to the future must be at peace with its past," he said in a post on his Twitter account after his cabinet passed the decree, saying the exhumation was needed to "restore dignity to the victims of Francoism."
Sanchez's Socialists say they want to turn the site into a place of "reconciliation" and memory for all Spaniards.
The decree requires approval by the parliament and is likely to be approved as it is backed by far-left party Podemos as well as Catalan separatist parties and a Basque nationalist party.
Franco's family will have 15 days from the end of August to decide where they want his remains to be transferred to. If they do not make a joint decision within that time, the government will pick a spot to bury him.
The decree is opposed by the main opposition conservative Popular Party (PP), which said it would appeal.
"It is more important (to Sanchez) to revive the ghosts of the past than to try to seduce people with the future. He is more interested in opening the wounds of our worst past than in concentrating on our better present," new PP leader Pablo Casado said Thursday.
Source: Press TV
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