Spain’s socialist-led government has begun legal action to shut down a group that exists to promote and preserve the legacy of Gen Francisco Franco, the dictator who ruled the country for almost 40 years.
In a statement on Thursday morning, Spain’s culture minister, Ernest Urtasun, said he had initiated judicial proceedings to have the National Francisco Franco Foundation (FNFF) dissolved because of its failure to comply with legislation that forbids any attempt to glorify the Franco regime.
The democratic memory law, which was introduced almost two years ago, is intended to bring “justice, reparation and dignity” to the victims of the civil war and subsequent dictatorship. Franco seized power in a military coup against the democratically elected Republican government in 1936.
The legislation contains provisions for closing down foundations that “act contrary to the general interest by apologising for Francoism, glorifying the coup d’etat, the dictatorship or its leaders, and which disdain and humiliate the victims of the coup d’etat, of the [civil] war and of Francoism, or which directly or indirectly incite hatred or violence against them”.
Urtasun said the courts would decide on the foundation’s fate after studying reports from the secretary of state for democratic memory and the attorney general’s office.
“Judges will have the last word,” he said. “It is the responsibility of this ministry to scrupulously comply with the democratic memory law. That is what we’ve done, what we’re doing today, and what we will carry on doing.”
Established less than a year after Franco died in November 1975, the FNFF exists to “disseminate and promote the study of the life, thought, legacy and work” of the man who, as its website puts it, “governed Spain’s destiny between 1936 and 1977”.
As well as holding a library of more than 30,000 documents at its headquarters close to Madrid’s Bernabéu stadium, the foundation sells books and a selection of patriotic ties, belts, cufflinks and swimming trunks on its website. Its executive president is a former marine general and its honorary president is Franco’s great-grandson Luis Alfonso de Borbón.
In a statement issued later on Thursday, the foundation said the decision was “absurd” and an “attempt to silence those who disagree” with the government and its “Bolivarian-style dictatorship”. It added: “The National Francisco Franco Foundation will carry on defending its principles and fighting for historical truth and justice.”
“In Germany or in Italy, it would be unthinkable to have a Hitler foundation or a Mussolini foundation,” read the petition.
Legal proceedings to shut the foundation are the latest step the government of the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has taken to try to help Spain come to terms with its past.
Almost five years ago, the government had Franco exhumed from his tomb in the Valley of the Fallen basilica outside Madrid and reinterred in a family mausoleum.
Sánchez’s political opponents have decried such moves as politically motivated and damaging to national unity.
