Spain’s transition out of fascism occurred within living memory. And it meant ignoring the dead.
September 17th, 2018. Published by The New Republic
“Exclusive: Photograph of the remains of Franco,” a Twitter user posted in late August. It was a joke: The accompanying picture showed not the dusty bones of Spain’s former dictator, but a portrait of the current king, Felipe VI.
Before dying, in 1975, Francisco Franco anointed Felipe’s father, Juan Carlos, to lead the country and keep in place his authoritarian, quasi-fascist “National Catholic” ideology. Instead, the new monarch led Spain into a process of express-speed modernization, helping create a modern parliamentary democracy. Yet four decades on, that transition still feels incomplete to many Spaniards—and nowhere is that more apparent than in the debate over what to do with the former dictator’s remains.
Last Thursday, Spain’s congress approved a motion to move Francisco Franco from his resting place, a war memorial known as the Valley of the Fallen… (See article)
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