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Topless Femen activists disrupt rally of Franco fans in Madrid

Bare-breasted protestors from the feminist activist group Femen on Sunday disrupted a rally of some 200 people in Madrid to mark the anniversary of the death of Spain's former dictator Francisco Franco.

Published: 18 November 2018 17:46 CET
Topless Femen activists disrupt rally of Franco fans in Madrid
Police officers subdue a member of feminist movement Femen as she protests against a demonstration marking the anniversary of the death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in Madrid. Photo: AFP

Police said nearly 200 Franco supporters had gathered in the Plaza de Oriente where he addressed the throngs during his 1939-75 military dictatorship.

Many bore flags, umbrellas and ties with the colours of the Franco-era Falangist party.

Three women interrupted the rally, their torsos daubed with the words “legal fascism” and “national shame”, before being arrested by police.

Some in the crowd reacted angrily, trying to assault the women.

The pro-Franco event came as the socialist government of Pedro Sanchez draws up plans to exhume the dictator's body from the Valley of the Fallen basilica just outside Madrid.

The family of the late dictator, who died on November 20th, 1975, wants his
remains placed in the family crypt at Madrid's La Almudena Cathedral.

Sanchez wants to move the former dictator's remains to a more discreet spot where it will be harder for Franco followers to pay homage.

Pro-Franco demonstrator Dori Grande told AFP that people from both sides of Spain's civil war were buried at the Valley of the Fallen site, which was created ostensibly to reunify the country.

“This year more than ever, we have to defend our homeland, our history, because history is there. You cannot erase it,” he added.

The remains of some 37,000 victims of the civil war, both republican and nationalists, are buried at the Valley of the Fallen basilica.

But many of the families of the dead were not notified and the site itself was partly built by republican prisoners, some of whom died in the process.

READ ALSO: Spanish parliament approves exhumation of General Franco 

FRANÇO

Spain to exhume bodies of civil war victims at Valley of the Fallen

The Spanish government on Tuesday approved a special fund to exhume graves at the Valley of the Fallen, where thousands of victims of the Spanish Civil War and dictator Francisco Franco are buried.

Published: 31 March 2021 09:30 CEST
Spain to exhume bodies of civil war victims at Valley of the Fallen
Women hold up pictures of their fathers and relatives, who were condemned to death during Franco’s dictatorship. Photo: OSCAR DEL POZO/AFP

The Socialist government said it had set aside €665,000 ($780,000) to exhume some 33,000 victims whose remains lie behind a vast basilica near Madrid.

Franco was buried in the basilica when he died in 1975 but his remains were removed in 2019 and transferred to a discreet family plot on the outskirts of the capital.

Government spokesperson Maria Jesus Montera told reporters that more than 60 families and international institutions had called for the exhumation of the victims to give relatives who suffered during the civil war and Franco’s dictatorship “moral reparation”.

Campaigners estimate more than 100,000 victims from the war and its aftermath remain buried in unmarked graves across Spain —- a figure, according to Amnesty International, only exceeded by Cambodia.

Human remains discovered during exhumation works carried out by the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory of Valladolid, in a mass grave where the bodies of hundreds of people were dumped during the Spanish civil war. Photo by CESAR MANSO/AFP

Built between 1940 and 1958 partly by the forced labour of political prisoners, the imposing basilica and the mausoleum of the Valley of the Fallen was initially intended for those who had fought for Franco.

But in 1959 the remains of many Republican opponents were moved there from cemeteries and mass graves across the country without their families being informed.

The crypts and ossuaries where some of the victims are buried are inaccessible as they were walled off at the time.

Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has made the rehabilitation of the victims of the Franco era one of his priorities since coming to power in 2018.

As well as the Valley of the Fallen, his government is also focusing on identifying remains founds in mass graves across Spain.

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