MADRID: Experts on Monday (Jun 12) began exhuming Spanish civil war victims from a huge basilica near Madrid, where the body of former dictator Francisco Franco once lay. The move comes as Spain gears up for an early general election on Jul 23 in which Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez faces an uphill
MADRID: Experts on Monday began exhuming Spanish civil war victims from a huge basilica near Madrid, where the body of former dictator Francisco Franco once lay.
The aim is to"recover those bodies and deliver them to their families to give them a dignified burial", the ministry said in a statement sent to AFP.A laboratory has been set up in the basilica carved into a mountainside to allow the archaeologists, forensic experts and scientific police to do their work.
While the site is ostensibly dedicated to the memory of all those killed on both sides of the war, only two graves at the basilica were ever marked: those of Franco and of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of Spain's fascist Falange party. Honouring those who died or suffered violence or repression during the civil war and the Franco dictatorship that followed has been a top priority for Sanchez, who came to power in 2018.
But the law has been politically divisive, with right-wing parties saying it needlessly dredges up the past.Opposition leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo, head of the right-wing Popular Party , has vowed to repeal the law if he comes to power in next month's election.
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