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Descendants of Spanish dictator Franco to sell off family jewels at London auction

Jewellery items once belonging to the wife of Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco are being offered for sale at London auction house Christies.

Published: 13 November 2019 12:21 CET
Descendants of Spanish dictator Franco to sell off family jewels at London auction
All photos from Christie's Catalogue "Important Jewels" Sale November 27th. PHOTOS: CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD. 2019

Jewellery once belonging to the wife of Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco are being offered for sale at London auction house Christie's.

An exquisite Art Déco diamond and emerald pendant necklace, matching drop earrings and a 19 carat marquise cut diamond ring all appear in the catalogue for a November 27th sale entitled “Important Jewels”.

The catalogue only lists the lots as belonging to “An Important Spanish Family” without identifying them further, but they are known to have belonged to the dictator’s wife Carmen Polo before being passed to their daughter, and only offspring, Carmen.

 

Carmen Franco, who died in 2017, was pictured wearing the diamond and emerald necklace to the wedding of the King’s elder sister Elena to Jaime de Marichalar in 1995 (Pictured below in Hola magazine).

The necklace last appeared adorning Margarita Vargas, the wife of Franco’s grandson Luis Alfonso de Burbon at a gala awards ceremony in 2016.

The items are expected to fetch between €300,000 and €400,000.

The sale has reignited a national debate over whether the descendants of Franco, who is said to have been responsible for the deaths of 300,000 people during the civil war and ensuing dictatorship, should be allowed to continue enjoying the spoils of his regime.

The Franco family legacy is a matter of controversy in Spain. With an estimated value of over €100 million, according to El Pais, assets belonging to the dictator’s grandchildren include a palace, 22 homes, 29 country estates, as well as five commercial premises and 195 garage spaces.

These include the Pazo de Meirás which was used by the dictator as a summer retreat in Galicia after it was ‘gifted’ to him by the people of A Coruña. In reality it was expropriated by the state and the families of those evicted are still fighting for compensation.

On Wednesday, the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH) demanded that the Spanish government look into the sale and determine whether the items could  be considered “plundered assets” and therefore returned to the people of Spain.

“The sale is worth investigating considering the dubious origin of his fortune and that was built on corruption , pillage and misappropriation,” said a spokesman from the ARHM, a group that campaigns for justice for the victims of the Franco and has led the struggle to find, exhume and identify those still lying in unmarked graves across Spain. 

“The Franco family fortune was built on the suffering of millions of people, the looting of thousands of properties, and the emptying of the National Heritage, initiated by the Generalissimo Foundation as soon as the war ended, in 1939.”

“Is it right that the family of a brutal dictator be allowed to profit from such a heritage?” they ask. 

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TODAY IN FRANCE

France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

France has paved the way towards paying reparations to more relatives of Algerians who sided with France in their country's independence war but were then interned in French camps.

Published: 16 May 2023 08:29 CEST
France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

More than 200,000 Algerians fought with the French army in the war that pitted Algerian independence fighters against their French colonial masters from 1954 to 1962.

At the end of the war, the French government left the loyalist fighters known as Harkis to fend for themselves, despite earlier promises it would look after them.

Trapped in Algeria, many were massacred as the new authorities took revenge.

Thousands of others who fled to France were held in camps, often with their families, in deplorable conditions that an AFP investigation recently found led to the deaths of dozens of children, most of them babies.

READ ALSO Who are the Harkis and why are they still a sore subject in France?

French President Emmanuel Macron in 2021 asked for “forgiveness” on behalf of his country for abandoning the Harkis and their families after independence.

The following year, a law was passed to recognise the state’s responsibility for the “indignity of the hosting and living conditions on its territory”, which caused “exclusion, suffering and lasting trauma”, and recognised the right to reparations for those who had lived in 89 of the internment camps.

But following a new report, 45 new sites – including military camps, slums and shacks – were added on Monday to that list of places the Harkis and their relatives were forced to live, the government said.

Now “up to 14,000 (more) people could receive compensation after transiting through one of these structures,” it said, signalling possible reparations for both the Harkis and their descendants.

Secretary of state Patricia Miralles said the decision hoped to “make amends for a new injustice, including in regions where until now the prejudices suffered by the Harkis living there were not recognised”.

Macron has spoken out on a number of France’s unresolved colonial legacies, including nuclear testing in Polynesia, its role in the Rwandan genocide and war crimes in Algeria.

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