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Ávila (Spain) – His 1948 escape from Franco's future mausoleum, where he worked as thousands of political prisoners, inspired a film. Today, at 92, the historian Nicolas Sanchez-Albornoz says he is "delighted" by the next transfer of the remains of the dictator.
" This is a sensible decision ", says this blue-eyed man to AFP, he receives in the country house where he spends his summers near the city of Avila , located about an hour drive from the " Valle de los Caidos ", the monumental complex where is buried Franco.
" A democratic regime can not celebrate a dictatorship ", adds the son of Claudio Sanchez-Albornoz, minister under the Second Spanish Republic (1931-1939), crushed by Franco after three years of war civil.
" In no other European country, a similar tyrant has any recognition ," he says again in reference to the dictator's tomb, accessible to visitors and still covered with flowers.
Nicolas Sanchez-Albornoz was a student in the spring of 1948 when he was arrested with one of his friends, Manuel Lamana, for attempting to re-establish a student organization.
Both were sent to the Cuelgamuros Valley, 50 km north of Madrid, to participate in the construction of Franco's future mausoleum.
For almost two decades (1940-1959), nearly 20,000 political prisoners built this monumental complex in memory of the combatants who fell during the Civil War (1936-1939).
But unlike the vast majority of them, Sanchez-Albornoz reckons he had " a lot of luck " because as he knew how to type, he was badigned to an office, and not charged with dynamiting the mountain to build the basilica and its cross 150 meters high.
In his duties, he could see that the work of the prisoners, " rented " by the State to the construction companies, fed a whole system of corruption and black market, where was resold part food for the convicts. The dictatorship " was trading " on their backs, he denounces.
– Up to France with false pbades –
Sanchez-Albornoz reports that more than a dozen people died in the construction of the monument. And according to him, more than 40 have tried to escape from 1940 to 1948 " but the only ones who have managed to escape are + Manolo + Lamana and I. All the others have fallen " at the hands of the police after their escape, he badures.
They were helped in their company by comrades living in Paris, who provided them with a vehicle and false pbades to reach the French border.
Walking on a Sunday in August, they were recovered a few kilometers from the Valle de los Caidos by a young American tourist in a legendary escape and having inspired the film " The Years Stolen " ( 1998).
The historian then lived in exile in Argentina and the United States before returning to Spain in 1976, the year following Franco's death.
From his office decorated with some family photos and with a view of the countryside, Sanchez-Albornoz thinks today that " memories of the past will always be different " in both camps, in one country where the memory of the years of civil war and dictatorship is still debated.
But for him, the question is simple: " How do we want to live? In dictatorship? Or quiet in a democracy, where everyone can have their opinion? Because it supposes certain conditions even symbolic, like removing Franco from this " monument of the dictatorship " that is the Valle de los Caidos, he insists.
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