Spanish PM calls for nation to heed past lessons on anniversary of Franco’s death

A man gives a fascist salute before the Madrid tomb of Francisco Franco on Thursday, 50 years after the Spanish dictator’s death. Photograph: Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images

Spain has marked the 50th anniversary of Francisco Franco’s death with an absence of official events but a call from the prime minister to heed the lessons of the dictatorship and defend the democratic freedom “wrenched from us for so many years”.

Franco, whose military coup against the elected republican government in 1936 triggered a civil war and brought about four decades of dictatorship, died in Madrid on 20 November 1975.