Spain’s Supreme Court approves exhumation of former Head of State

Spain’s Supreme Court has ruled that the remains of a former Spanish Head of State, Francisco Franco, should be exhumed.

Franco, ruled Spain as Head of State from 1939 until his death in 1975.

According to a Spanish media, this followed a plan to put him next to his wife in the El Pardo cemetery north of Madrid where various other politicians are interred.

They added that, following the ruling, the government could exhume Franco before elections on 10 November.

Spain government, approved Franco’s exhumation in August, also backed by the Socialist government’s plan to move the remains from a state mausoleum to a less controversial site.

But an appeal by Franco’s family, against the exhumation and proposing an alternative site was rejected.

According to Silvia Navarro, “The idea that people who were killed by Franco’s troops are buried together with Franco, it’s very absurd, and they’re still glorifying him as if he was the saviour of Spain.”

The family wanted him to lie in a family crypt in the Almudena Cathedral – right in the centre of the capital.

BBC reports that in a unanimous ruling, the court said it had decided to “completely reject the appeal lodged by the family in relation to Francisco Franco’s exhumation”.

The government argued that the former dictator should not be placed anywhere where he could be glorified. It also said there were potential security issues with the cathedral site.

He currently lies in a huge mausoleum called the Valley of the Fallen, alongside tens of thousands of civil war dead.

Francisco Franco, was the youngest general in Spain in 1926 at age 33, who was helped by Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, to conquer civil war in 1939.