In Spain, the process to exhume the remains of the dictator Francisco Franco from the basilica at the site known as the Valley of the Fallen concluded today. It brought to an end an anomaly that had persisted for 44 years – because in principle, a democracy cannot honour a dictatorship. Until now, Franco had been interred in a mausoleum of gigantic proportions, located in the mountains to the north of Madrid, at an altitude of 1,400 metres and crowned by a 150-metre-high cross that can be seen for miles. The first step towards this conclusion was taken in May 2017, when a parliamentary initiative by the Spanish Socialist Workers party (PSOE) to reactivate the 2007 law of historical memory and to exhume the dictator generated an extraordinary degree of consensus in the congress of deputies.
— source theguardian.com | 24 Oct 2019