Parting shot at Franco’s tomb

A COMMISSION appointed by Spain’s outgoing Socialist government has urged General Francisco Franco’s remains be exhumed from his tomb at a Civil War memorial site and handed to his family for reburial.

The new conservative administration will probably reject the move. Besides Franco’s remains, the site known as the Valley of the Fallen holds the bones of nearly 34,000 people from both sides killed in the 1936-39 war.

The commission said the site should be designated as a memorial for all those killed during the civil war, but that Franco died of natural causes in 1975.