Relatives of Spain's former ruler, General Francisco Franco (1892-1975), have asked the Catholic Church and Vatican not to allow the country's new Socialist government to go ahead with plans to remove his remains from a massive state mausoleum near Madrid.
The La Razon daily said the request had been made by the dictator's seven grandchildren in a letter last week to Fr Santiago Cantera, prior of the Benedictine abbey at the Valley of the Fallen, in response to calls for Franco's reburial by Pedro Sanchez, who was inaugurated as Socialist premier on 2 June after ousting the centre-right Mariano Rajoy.
However, the paper said the Vatican appeared "unwilling to enter the debate", adding that a "final decision" would rest with Spain's Madrid archdiocese and its leader, Cardinal Carlos Osoro. Madrid Church sources had confirmed the cardinal would have "no interest" in opposing the move, La Razon reported, if it reflected a "consensus solution" and "served national reconciliation".
In his first TV interview on 18 June, Sanchez said he would press ahead with plans to rebury Franco, in line with a 2017 Socialist-backed parliamentary resolution, and transform the Valley of the Fallen into a "national remembrance centre".
Besides the dictator, who ruled Spain for four decades after its 1936-9 Civil War, the site, constructed largely by political prisoners, contains the tomb of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera (1903-1936), founder of the extreme-right Falange Espanola party, and 34,000 other registered war dead, and includes a 500-foot stone Catholic Cross and Pontifical Basilica.
Spain's Catholic Vida Nueva online news agency said Sanchez appeared to be "making political gestures to mark a new style of government", but also risked "generating deep discord" over the projected exhumation, which has been opposed by Rajoy's Partido Popular and other conservative groups. It added that King Felipe VI, whose father authorised the dictator's interment, would also have to consent to the move, which could infringe Spain's 1979 agreements with the Vatican.
Speaking in early June, Spain's new Foreign Minister, Josep Borrell, said the government planned to review the 1979 agreements, governing the Catholic Church's legal, economic, educational and cultural status, warning the La Sexta TV channel in his first live interview it would "take the state's secularity seriously".
Sanchez, a self-declared atheist, has also campaigned to end state funding for school religion and remove Christian symbols from official ceremonies and institutions, as well as to ensure no denomination enjoys "preferential treatment" in Spain. His PSOE party has committed itself to legalise euthanasia and strengthen the rights of LGBT groups, while ensuring all "ideological, religious, cultural and gender convictions" are equally respected.
Over 35,000 Spaniards have already signed an online petition opposing moves to "desecrate the Valley of the Fallen".
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