AP Interview: Franco grandson blasts Spain over exhumation – The Associated Press

MADRID (AP) The grandson of late dictator Gen. Francisco Franco said that Thursdays planned exhumation of his grandfathers body is a profanation and that Spains interim government wants to turn it into a rally before a Nov. 10 general election.

Francisco Franco Martnez-Bordi spoke to The Associated Press hours before Francos remains were due to be moved from a grandiose mausoleum to a more discreet cemetery.

Its an all-out desecration, said Franco Martnez-Bordi, accusing Supreme Court judges who ruled in favor of the government the Catholic Church and center-right Spanish parties who didnt impede the reburial of being accomplices of prime minister Pedro Snchezs Socialists plan.

The government, he said, had to hop over several obstacles with the complicity of those people to arrive on time and be able to use the exhumation as part of the electoral campaign.

Spain, he said, is under the dictatorship of political correctness.

Associations of relatives of those who died in the 1936-39 Civil War and the ensuing dictatorship regard Francos presence at the gargantuan Valley of the Fallen as an insult.

The government says that its also against Spains standing as a modern democratic state and that no dictator should be enshrined in a state mausoleum. Snchez had initially promised to get the exhumation done by the end of 2018, but he faced a long legal battle with Francos seven grandchildren and political opposition.

Franco Martnez-Bordi, 64, and 21 other relatives will be attending Thursdays exhumation behind closed doors and a private Mass at the reburial graveyard in the outskirts of Madrid. Authorities have banned protests in the area and cameras will only be allowed outside of both sites.

What they want is to humiliate as much as possible, said Franco Martnez-Bordi, who criticized that the government has not allowed state honors in tomorrows ceremonies despite Franco having been Spains head of state and government for decades.

But the family has plans to use a Spanish flag with a black eagle, symbols associated with the Franco regime, over their grandfathers coffin on Thursday, when the hearse heads from a helicopter to the Mingorrubio cemetery. The flag is the same used for the original burial on Nov. 23, 1975.

The Supreme Court last month granted the government the right to rebury the dictators remains in the Mingorrubio cemetery, where Francos late wife Carmen Polo has been resting since 1988, over the relatives choice of Madrids Almudena Cathedral, where they own a grave slot. Authorities feared the cathedral could become another pilgrimage site for nostalgic fascists.

Franco Martnez-Bordi said the family planned to take their case to the European Court of Human Rights hoping to be granted permission to move Francos remains to the cathedral.

He also dismissed as a lie that relatives of victims buried alongside the dictator at the Valley of the Fallen had been asking for Francos removal from the site for decades.

Nobody, or almost nobody, gives a damn where my grandfather is buried, he said. Im not going to say that there isnt somebody around, but both winners and losers (in the war) are all dead. Their grandchildren are being influenced by the media and the associations who represent their grandparents.

Francos exhumation stems from amendments of a 2007 Historical Memory Law that aimed to seek redress for the estimated 100,000 Franco victims who are buried in unmarked graves across Spain, including thousands at the Valley of the Fallen.

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AP Interview: Franco grandson blasts Spain over exhumation - The Associated Press