Spain removed the last statue of dictator Francisco Franco

The last statue of former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco was removed from the city gates of Melilla on Tuesday, an autonomous Spanish city on the northwest coast of Africa.

Melilla’s Director of Education and Culture, Elena Fernández Treviño, celebrated the decision as “historic” after regional lawmakers voted on Monday to remove the effigy, noting that it was “The only statue dedicated to a dictator that is still in public space in Europe.”

Erected three years after Franco’s death in 1978, the figure commemorated his role as commander of the Spanish Legion in the Rif War, a conflict led in the 1920s by Spain and France against Berber tribes in the mountainous Rif region of Morocco.

It was the last commemoration on the public highway to the man who rose up in 1936 against the Republican government and, after a bloody civil war, He ruled the country with an iron fist from 1939 until his death in November 1975.

Without too much fanfare, A group of workers operated a mechanical excavator and heavy drills to cut the brick platform on which the statue stood, which was then removed in a truck.

“History day”, the Melilla government tweeted with a series of photographs. City officials said the statue was taken to a municipal warehouse, without specifying what it would be used for.

A single lawmaker, from the far-right Vox party, voted against the measure, while the conservative People’s Party abstained. Vox argued that because the statue celebrated Franco’s military role and not his dictatorship, the Law of historical memory, a 2007 law calling for the removal of all statues and place names linked to the Franco regime, should not apply.

The current prime minister, the socialist Pedro Sanchez, has made the repair and rehabilitation of the victims of the Franco regime one of his priorities since coming to power in 2018.

After a long argument with the descendants of the dictator, In October 2019, his administration removed Franco’s remains from the monumental mausoleum on the outskirts of Madrid. where he was buried – known as ‘The Valley of the Dead’ – and transferred them to a discreet family niche in a cemetery in the capital. Last September, the Spanish state He recovered the summer palace of the former dictator, which was in the hands of his heirs.

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