SPAIN: The 70th anniversary of the Spanish civil war has reopened old divisions between the left and right on how to remember Gen Franco, writes Tracy Wilkinson in Madrid
The flowers on the grave of Gen Francisco Franco are only slightly wilted.
The steady click of footsteps echoes in the cavernous Catholic basilica that cradles his tomb. Frequent visitors, whether in admiration or revulsion, snap photographs in this gloomy, grandiose, granite-and-marble sanctuary larger than many airport terminals.
"This is shameful!" said Antonio Gonzalez, a tourist from southern Spain. "But better he's here than in Moncloa," he added, referring to the headquarters of the Spanish government. "I guess it's all about forgiving and forgetting," said his wife, Maricarmen Chavez. "I lived in Germany and never saw anything like this for Hitler," she added.
The civil war initiated by Franco erupted 70 years ago, and the dictator has been dead for 30. But Spain is today still confronting his ghost, torn over how to remember the conflict and Franco's four-decade reign.
In a few weeks, parliament is scheduled to begin debating a hotly contested law: It will ban ceremonies at Franco's grave and give greater recognition to his victims. The basilica would become, in the words of one official, just a church - with Franco in the basement.
Spurred on by prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and his two-year-old socialist government, Spaniards are examining the brutalities of the dictatorship and giving voice to its long ignored victims - men and women who fought to defend the elected left-wing government that Franco ousted and who then worked clandestinely to undermine the generalísimo. Tens of thousands were killed, imprisoned or sent into long exile for their actions.
But the process of reassessment has angered conservatives, some of whom admire what Franco stood for, while others think the past is best forgotten.
Spain's rapid transition from authoritarian regime to vibrant democracy is seen as a shining model of post-conflict reconciliation. Its success is largely credited to a political pact in which the left and the right agreed to seal that dark chapter of their history and move forward.
As that pact unravels, El Valle de los Caidos (Valley of the Fallen) remains the most ostentatious example of a state-sponsored Franco cult. Carved nearly a quarter of a mile into the side of a mountain, the gigantic church was constructed by the hard labour of political prisoners in the late 1940s and 50s. The site is maintained by public money.
Nicolas Sanchez Albornoz (80) was one of the prisoners forced to help construct the monument. Arrested in 1947, he eventually escaped from the prison camp, fled to France and later lived decades of exile in Argentina, where he became a historian and university professor. To this day, he remembers the names, faces and final moments of fellow prisoners hauled away to their execution before a firing squad.
Sanchez Albornoz says Franco ought to be disinterred and the monument transformed into a Civil War memorial for both sides.
"Nowhere in Europe is a dictator buried so gloriously," he said. "Not Lenin. Not Stalin. Why Franco?" Other surviving victims share his anger.
"You cannot forget the past. I dream of the tortures. How can I forget that?" said Matias Esteban (85) a veteran communist who still has small scars on his left wrist from the restraints applied to him during 11 years of prison. He was arrested when he was 19. He was beaten repeatedly while moved from jail to jail, he says.
Many of these survivors fear the government's efforts will be ineffectual. They expected more from the ruling socialists; Zapatero's own grandfather was killed by Franco's forces.
The new law, for instance, would ban ceremonies at Franco's grave but wouldn't remove his remains or significantly change the site. The limitations come in part from negotiations with the chief opposition party, the right-wing Popular Party, the somewhat reformed heir of Franquista fascism.
Ramon Jauregui, a socialist parliamentarian, acknowledged a need to confront the past and find justice for those who suffered and were always relegated to the status of the war's losers. But, he said, removing Franco from El Valle de los Caidos would simply be too divisive and inflammatory.
Some in Spain see the civil war being fought, rhetorically at least, all over again. The Spanish routinely publish death notices in their newspapers. Suddenly, in the midst of this debate, death notices alluding to the civil war era have begun appearing again.
In the right-wing El Mundo of October 11th appeared the notice: "70th anniversary in memory of Manuel Molina Rodriguez . . . vilely assassinated at 33 years of age by the Red militias in Motril, along with six Augustinian fathers and four other priests . . . a total of 92 martyrs . . . part of the seven months of barbarism suffered in 1936." On the same day in the left-wing El País appeared: "In memory of Enrique Sanchez Perez, assassinated by the Franquistas on August 5th, 1939, along with 55 other youths."
The next potential flare-up will come on November 20th, the anniversary of Franco's birth. Every year, a small but vociferous group of nostalgic Franco enthusiasts celebrates in El Valle de los Caidos. The new law would make such rituals illegal, but it will probably still be wending its way through parliament as the date comes and goes.
That is a dilemma for Jose Luis Corral, head of the far-right Spanish Youth Action. He plans to mark the upcoming anniversary regardless of new laws, and is outraged that, as he sees it, the left wants to rewrite history.
"They want to turn the past upside down," says Corral, who decorates his office with posters of Franco and his small apartment with pictures of Pope John Paul II. "They take down the monuments to Franco and put up their own. How cynical is that? . . . Let them make their own monuments - and not lay a finger on ours." - (LA Times-Washington Post service)