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KING Felipe VI's annual Christmas Eve speech once again included a covert appeal to secessionist politicians, as well as raising concerns about young adults' struggle to afford housing and violence against women.
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Family members of the fascist leader, who died in 1975, carried the coffin on their shoulders, covered with a pre-Constitutional Spanish flag – a symbol often used by the far right.
Franco supporters were kept back from the graveyard by authorities, but crowds of them still shouted Arriba España – one of the main slogans of the dictatorship – and Viva Franco, with one man having travelled from China to 'see his idol being buried'.
Franco has been interred alongside his wife, Carmen Polo, in the original coffin from 1975, despite its severely deteriorated state.
Minister of justice Dolores Delgado, who attended in her capacity as notary, and the dictator's grandson Francis Franco Martínez-Bordiú, did not speak to each other or pass the time of day throughout the exhumation, burial or transfer of the ex-leader's remains in a Super Puma helicopter.
About 250 people were waiting in Mingorrubio when the aircraft landed, including reporters and relatives.
Spain's government has said fines will be levied on and criminal action taken against those seen wearing T-shirts, baseball caps and carrying flags with pro-Franco symbols and messages, since any exaltation of the deceased head of State is banned by law.
The family was also told they were not allowed to display symbols of this type 'except in privacy' during their personal funeral ceremony, although Francis Franco carried a folded-up pre-Constitutional flag.
They were warned that any such symbols left behind in the Mingorrubio-El Pardo basilica would be removed.
A total of 22 relatives, including grandchildren, great-grandchildren and their spouses – since Franco's only daughter, Carmen Martínez-Bordiú, died a year ago – attended the ceremony.
The coffin arrived at the Mingorrubio-El Pardo churchyard at 14.41, although the team behind the exhumation was already on site in the Valle de los Caídos at 07.00 this morning.
Relatives had appointed a priest, Ramón Tejero, to host the private funeral and recite the Lord's Prayer for the late General.
His father, Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero, 87, is the man behind the attempted coup d'état on February 23, 1981, in what is now the Parliament building during the investiture ceremony of Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo, the second president of the newly-democratic Spain after the resignation of the late Adolfo Suárez who, along with Rex Emeritus King Juan Carlos I, is credited with bringing about the Transition to democracy and creating the Spanish Constitution.
Lieutenant Colonel Tejero tried to enter the cemetery during the reburial, but was barred by police.
Franco joins Trujillo, Stalin, Mussolini and other exhumed dictators
General Franco is now another name on a long list of world dictators who have been exhumed and moved to more discreet locations, including General Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, the Dominican Republic's tyrannical leader who was assassinated in 1961 but 'revived' in fiction – Mario Vargas Llosa's The Feast of the Goat, or La Fiesta del Chivo, describes his systematic abuse of women, and Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Óscar Wao gives a 'street-language' potted history of the dictatorship, revealing his nicknames as El Jefe, or 'The Boss', and 'The Failed Cattle Thief' – and who is also buried at the Mingorrubio-El Pardo cemetery along with other Franco ministers, such as Carrero Blanco, who was killed by an ETA car bomb in 1973.
Other dictators who have been exhumed include Argentinian leader Juan Domingo Perón, unburied in 2006 for DNA testing after 72-year-old Martha Holgado claimed she was the result of an extra-marital affair between Perón and her mother, María Demarchi – which turned out not to be the case, as Perón was sterile – Benito Mussolini, Italy's contemporary of Hitler, who was moved to prevent fascist pilgrimages to his grave and was then 'stolen' by his supporters, spending the next two weeks being transported around Milan in the boot of a car before one of the thieves 'handed him in', Iósif Stalin, who was moved from his site next to Lenin in a marble mausoleum in Moscow's Red Square to a grave at the foot of the Kremlin wall, Libyan leader Muammar a-Gaddafi, killed by revolutionaries in 2011 and now in an unmarked tomb to prevent grave-robbers or 'pilgrims', Albanian Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha, who was buried in the Martyrs' Cemetery from 1985 until 1992 when he was moved to a public graveyard in Tirana, Persian Sha Reza Pahlavi who, exiled in Johannesburg, South Africa at the time of his death in 1944, was later repatriated to Iran, and Philippine leader Ferdinand Marcos, who died in 1989 and whose exhumation and reburial in 2016 at Manila's Heroes' Cemetery has caused a huge divide in the country's society.
Pinochet, Rainier of Monacho and Rockefeller among attendees at Franco's 'first' funeral
The grave Franco now lies in had, in fact, been reserved for him and Carmen Polo in the 1960s by Carlos Arias Navarro, who was president at the time of his death, although it was then decided to bury the fascist leader in the Valle de los Caídos ('Valley of the Fallen') in San Lorenzo de El Escorial which is, effectively, a resting place for heroes and martyrs as will as victims of Franco himself – a factor which led to the decision to exhume him out of respect for relatives of those who died during his régime – and over 100,000 people attended the funeral or the prior corpore insepulto service, either to pay homage to their 'beloved leader' or to make sure their oppressor was in fact dead.
They included Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who later confessed his 'admiration until death' of Franco, plus Ferndinand Marcos' wife Imelda Marcos, King Hussein of Jordan, Prince Rainier of Monaco, French president Valéry Giscard, and US vice-president Nelson Rockefeller.
Despite society's clear love-hate divide over Franco at the time of his death, no public disturbance or any other trouble was reported on the day of his funeral service – only the odd 'fan' who stood frozen and fixated by the open coffin with his or her hand raised in salute and who eventually had to be quietly removed by police.
This time around, Franco's burial has been far less of an international spectacle, although anecdotes are already spilling forth.
Far-right political party Vox's leader Santiago Abascal has 'warned' his rivals in government that 'if you mess with the dead you suffer for it', referring to the legendary curse of Tut Ankh Amon.
A TV presenter has been criticised for stating on air that young people in Spain today 'are more concerned with Fortnite than Franco' – although a nod to this in the shape of a video game has gone viral on Twitter.
User Repeluco3 has created the SuperMario-style game 'Franco's Exhumation', in which the player attempts to get into the Valle de los Caídos and has to fight off 'forces' trying to stop them, such as Franco supporters and relatives, including floating ghosts.
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