The remains of a Francoist military leader accused of being responsible for thousands of executions were exhumed overnight from Wednesday to Thursday from the Macarena basilica in Seville, under a new law aimed at preventing tributes in from public places to figures of the Franco dictatorship.
The Brotherhood of the Macarena, an association of the faithful, announced on Thursday that it had "
exhumed the mortal remains of Gonzalo Queipo de Llano y Sierra and his wife Genoveva Martí Tovar, as well as Francisco Bohórquez Vecina
", his closest military collaborator.
The mortal remains of the leaders of the military coup of 1936 cannot be or remain buried in an important place accessible to the public, other than a cemetery, which could favor the organization of public tributes
Excerpt from the Democratic Memory Law adopted in October
General Queipo de Llano (1875-1951), the highest military official in southern Spain at the time, is held responsible for the thousands of executions that took place after the military uprising that triggered the Civil War (1936-1939) , the most famous being that of the poet Federico García Lorca.
Between 1936 and 1951, some 50,000 people died, victims of repression, in Andalusia, according to work published in 2012 by the Center for Andalusian Studies, which depends on the regional government.
The new "democratic memory" law, adopted in early October by Parliament, stipulates that "
the mortal remains of the leaders of the military coup of 1936 may not be or remain buried in an important place accessible to the public, other than a cemetery, which could encourage the organization of public tributes
".
"To the victims of Francoism"
The exhumation was carried out with “
the consent of the two families
”, underlined the Brotherhood of the Macarena, without specifying in which cemetery the remains were then buried.
Some members of the families of the deceased waited for the release of the remains, at 2:20 a.m., to applaud them and shout "long
live Queipo! "
“, according to images from Spanish television.
A few meters away, a woman who has fought for years to honor the memory of the victims of Francoism, Paqui Maqueda, recited the names of the members of her family executed by the dictatorship and shouted "
honor and glory to the victims of Francoism !
The left-wing government of Pedro Sánchez, which passed the new law, welcomed the exhumation.
"
This is what we must do as a democratic and civilized country
," Vice President Yolanda Díaz told state television.
Phalanx
Conversely, the president of the People's Party (conservative right), main opposition party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, considered that "
politics must focus on solving the problems of the living and leave the dead in peace
".
For his part, the leader of the far-right Vox party, Santiago Abascal, accused the government on Twitter of "
desecrating graves and disturbing the rest of the dead
".
Francisco Franco, who died in 1975, was exhumed in 2019 from the impressive mausoleum of the “Valle de los Caídos”, a monumental basilica built on his orders near Madrid.
In this same mausoleum, the Spanish government also wants to exhume the remains of the founder of the Falange, a party of fascist inspiration, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, shot by the Republican camp at the start of the conflict.