Supreme Court says 'yes' to moving Franco's remains from Valle de los Caídos

Franco is buried in the giant mausoleum, which is also a major tourist attraction in the Greater Madrid region, alongside hundreds of victims of his own fascist régime and who fought against his Falangist army in the Civil War.

Descendants of Franco's victims consider this situation to 'have no place' in a 21st-century democracy, and Sánchez and his government agree.

But plans to exhume the dictator were halted when his grandchildren filed an appeal to the highest contentious court in the land.

Now, however, the Supreme Court has ruled that the national government's proposed solution – for Franco's body to be moved to the Mingorrubio cemetery in El Pardo (Greater Madrid region) and buried next to that of his wife Carmen Polo – will go ahead.

The family had proposed that if Franco were to be moved from the Valle de los Caídos, he should be buried in a crypt at the Almudena Cathedral in Madrid, but as this is a public place of worship and a tourist attraction, the government blocked the idea – and now the Supreme Court has done so, too.

The Franco family's lawyer Felipe Utrera-Molina says the dictator's grandchildren will 'exhaust all possible resources' in their quest, because 'it is a matter of dignity'.

Now that the Supreme Court has turned down their appeal, the dictator's relatives only have the option of appealing to the Constitutional Court, whose rôle is purely that of interpreting the Magna Carta to ascertain whether the appellant's rights within it have been breached.

Given that such an appeal is unlikely to succeed, the only recourse left to Franco's descendants will be to apply to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Utrera-Molina says this is exactly their plan, since they consider their Constitutional and human rights have been violated by their relative's being exhumed against their will and being buried again in a location not of their choosing.

“Their rights within the Constitution are being denied,” he insists.

“And the cemetery in El Pardo is also State-owned so, if the remains cannot stay in the Valle de los Caídos because of its being State-owned, then they should not be buried in El Pardo, either.”

Other appeals filed by the Benedictine monks' community of the Valle de los Caídos, the Francisco Franco Association and the Association in Defence of the Valle de los Caídos are still waiting to be examined by the Supreme Court, but judges opted to deal with the family's claim first, since it was the most complex and also the only one which appealed against the future burial location – the others are merely calling for the decision to remove the body from the mausoleum to be blocked.

But the rejection of the family's appeal will have set a precedent which means the others are unlikely to prosper.

Spain's government, in response to the Supreme Court's verdict, says it will seek to begin the exhumation as soon as possible – maybe even before the repeat general elections, due on November 10.