The remains of Spanish fascist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera have been exhumed from a mausoleum and moved to a less-prominent cemetery in Madrid.
The move is part of an effort by the government to tackle the legacy of the country’s civil war and dictatorship.
Primo de Rivera was executed at the start of the 1936-1939 conflict, over his links to rebels who had carried out a coup against the elected government.
His modern-day supporters clashed with police outside the cemetery.
“The exhumation of Primo de Rivera is good news for democracy,” tweeted Ione Belarra, minister of social rights in Spain’s leftist coalition government.
“The fascists have to be taken out of mausoleums and off the streets,” she added.
Primo de Rivera’s body was buried in four other sites, before being moved in 1959 to the Valley of Cuelgamuros (previously the Valley of the Fallen), a huge mausoleum in the mountains north of Madrid.
The structure was built by the dictator Gen Francisco Franco, who was also buried there after his death in 1975.
Both men were interred near the main altar of the monument’s basilica. After a legal battle, Franco was exhumed in 2019 by the then-Socialist government.
The exhumation of Primo de Rivera follows last year’s approval of the government’s Democratic Memory Law, which seeks to remove Francoist symbols from public spaces and ensure that figures linked to the regime are not glorified. (BBC)
