Between Tradition and Politics – Legal Issues of the Exhumation of General Franco from the Valley of the Fallen

Abstract

On 24 August2018, aRoyal Decree-Law amending the Historical Remembrance Act was adopted as part of the process to transform the Valley of the Fallen into a place of reconciliation and commemoration of the victims of the Spanish Civil War. The multiplicity of legal regulations in the field of secular and church law analyzed in the article proves the particular complexity of the problem. The 2011 Report of the Experts on the Valley of the Fallen in Article 31 indicated the need to cooperate with the church authorities and obtain the necessary consent for exhumation due to the special nature of its place – the area of the Basilica, which is a place of worship. The Spanish Supreme Court, in its sentence of 30 September 2019, recognized the legitimacy of regulating the issue of exhumation in the form of a royal decree-law, stressing that the exhumation has a political and ideological dimension, but none of them affects religious beliefs, it is not aimed at their negation or ignoring. The Supreme Court agreed with the position of the government that in the case of the exhumation of General Francisco Franco, permission to enter the Basilica is required, but it is not necessary in the case of the decision on the exhumation itself.