Franco: Fury Around a Grave

Cervantes can sleep in peace, his succession is assured. Where the novelist camped in the seventeenth century Don Quixote fighting fictitious black knights—in fact, windmills—the heirs of the Spanish Republicans want, in 2019, to defeat ... a skeleton, attacking the mortal remains of Francisco Franco, in the name of the “fight for democracy.”

In an umpteenth rebellion both unworthy and macabre, the Spanish Supreme Court rejected, on September 24, 2019, the recourse of the descendants of General Franco. The exhumation of the dead remains of the head of state that ended the bloody civil war unleashed by anarchists and communists is thus authorized. It was one of the flagship measures of a socialist government headed by a Pedro Sanchez lacking inspiration.

But the family of the man the international press considers as a dictator doomed to just damnatio memoriae, does not intend to throw in the towel: “we will exhaust all remedies within our reach...before the Constitutional Court or in court European Court of Human Rights,” assured their lawyer, Felipe Utrera Molina.

The Church of Spain, stricken with selective amnesia, tries to forget all that she owes to the Caudillo’s commitment. The Benedictine Prior of the Monastery of Vallée de los Caidos—where Franco rests—Fr.Santiago Cantera, is one of the few members of the Catholic hierarchy who is firmly opposed to any exhumation.

Only one man can still intervene: Pope Francis. At this time, the Vatican did not want to speak, but since the pontiff is the last resort for the prior of the monastery of Los Caidos, it is difficult to see Francis not interveningat some point. Unless the political campaign for the legislative elections in November 2019 does not take up its rights again, and does not postpone the exhumation of Franco to later.

Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor – “may an avenger comes out from my ashes one day”—Virgil pointed out to the dying queen of Carthage, evoking the future figure of Hannibal, the terror of Rome. Pedro Sanchez would be well advised to re-read his classics: they alone are a real lesson in life.