Plan to put dictator Franco’s remains in Madrid cathedral protested

A person walks by the Franco family burial space adorned with flowers in the Almudena Crypt, a cavernous late-19th century Catholic temple under Madrid’s Almudena cathedral, in central Madrid, Spain, Thursday Oct. 25, 2018.Hundreds of protesters in Madrid are urging government and Catholic church authorities to prevent the remains of the country’s 20th century dictator from ending in the city’s cathedral. Spain’s center-left government has promised to exhume this year Gen. Francisco Franco from a glorifying mausoleum, but the late dictator’s heirs have defied the plans by proposing for his remains to be relocated to a family crypt under the cathedral. (AP Photo/Paul White)

MADRID — Hundreds of protesters in Madrid were urging Spanish government and Catholic church authorities to prevent the remains of 20th-century dictator Francisco Franco from ending up in the city’s cathedral.

Spain’s center-left government has promised to exhume the general’s body from a glorifying mausoleum he had built.

Franco’s heirs have proposed reinterring the remains in a family crypt below Almudena Cathedral, a move that would thwart the government’s purpose for digging them up.

Protesters on Thursday marched from a square in the Spanish capital to the cathedral crypt. They held signs with photos of Franco and Adolf Hitler and shouted, “Franco, criminal, out of the cathedral.”

The government said it can remove Franco’s remains from the Valley of the Fallen, but can’t legally stop his heirs from reburying them in a church.  /kga