Spain to make first exhumations from civil war mausoleum

[Starry Messenger]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/09/spain-valley-of-the-fallen-general-franco-exhumations

A Spanish court has for the first time authorised the exhumation of bodies from the Valley of the Fallen, a vast mausoleum where the dictator Francisco Franco is buried with thousands of victims of Spain’s civil war.

<snip>

Built under Franco’s regime between 1940 and 1958 in the granite mountains of the Sierra de Guadarrama, the Valley of the Fallen holds the remains of over 30,000 civil war dead from both sides of the conflict.

The site, where Franco lies buried behind the high altar of a vast basilica hewn into the rock, has long been a rallying point for the far right in Spain.

The remains of tens of thousands of other victims of the civil war, as well as of the repression of the rightwing Franco regime that followed, remain scattered in unmarked mass graves across the country.

<snip>

[MADem]

1. That place has a very weird vibe. nt