Francisco Franco Foundation outlawed in European Parliament

This means the Francisco Franco Foundation is now illegal and must be wound up.

Five different political parties in Europe, including the PP and other right-wing or conservative groups, voted in favour, but the latter would only do so if no mention was made of any specific organisations.

The Francisco Franco Foundation, run by the family of the late dictator (pictured), was not cited as a main reason for the ban – it is principally in response to concerns about a rise in neo-fascist and neo-Nazi type attacks.

One of the most recent high-profile cases was an assault on Italian MEP Eleonora Forenza and her assistant by an alt-right group known as Casa Pound.

The 28 governments in the EU have been urged to condemn and take disciplinary action against fascist speech by politicians and other public figureheads amid worries that the trend of xenophobia and racism is becoming institutionalised.

European Parliament wants all 28 member States to set up 'anti-hate' police squads and to ensure there is no fascim within their security forces.

It also calls for community associations to report any type of hate speech or hate crime within the EU.

As part of the move, MEPs emphasised the importance of educating in and raising awareness of Europe's history, especially the murky bits, among younger generations to prevent future hate crimes, and asked member States to set up a 'common culture of historic memory' to reject fascist behaviour.

In Spain, this is already covered by the Law of Historic Memory, created in 2007 by the then socialist president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, which involves, among other things, removing emblems in tribute to Franco's régime and reviving the story of people from Spain killed during the dictatorship.

MEPs said young people need to be 'more and more aware' of fascist movements and incidents in history, since sociologists and historians have long warned that the reality of any global or social upheaval tends to fade after around 50 years and becomes forgotten altogether once it has passed from living memory – as an example, anyone in Spain who was an adult at the beginning of the Civil War will now be aged over 100, and within a generation, there may be few or no people left in Europe who remember World War II.

European Parliament, despite some MEPs calling for non-naming of specific organisations, did allude to investigations under way in some member States against certain associations.

These include a police probe focusing on 12 members of the so-called Hogar Social Madrid ('Madrid Social Home'), a misnomer which is in fact an alt-right network.

Other police inquiries currently centre on members of the Falange – the 'hangover' of the fascist Falangists from the Civil War – the National Alliance (Alianza Nacional) and National Democracy (Democracia Nacional), some of whose members have been sentenced for attacks on the Blanquerna Cultural Centre in 2013 and for death-threats against the chairman of SOS Racismo.

The Francisco Franco Foundation calls the move 'anti-democratic', 'sectarian' and 'unprecedented', and alludes to 'freedom of speech and opinion'.