Usually, totalitarian dictatorships like Franco’s end when they are overthrown, and afterwards, their crimes and illiberalism are condemned. The fall of Franco was not like this, and it did not come from a catharsis of popular discontent, but rather with his death, from natural causes. Before he died, Franco had nominated the Bourbon king Juan Carlos I as his successor and following Juan Carlos’ coronation, the new king ushered in a constitutional monarchy. With this, Spain passed from dictatorship to democracy without revolution. However, the transition process was not straightforward and was as delicate as it was difficult.

The shared collective memory of the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39, and the fear of reigniting a similar conflict, as well as the continued role of many of Franco’s former ministers in high government positions, meant that instead of an open denunciation of Franco and his regime, Spain agreed to a Pacto del Olvido (Pact of Forgetting.) In the place of condemnation, Spain adopted a form of national amnesia and in 1977 The Pact of Forgetting was compounded by an Amnesty Law which ensured there would be no prosecutions for crimes committed during the War and Dictatorship. In this way, the whitewashing of history that had occurred under Franco, continued under the democratically elected governments which succeeded him. The mass-murders of the Civil War were ignored, repression was left uncriticised and the unmarked graves of Republican victims were left unidentified.

In recent years the tide of historical memory has begun to turn and Spain has taken some positive steps towards reclaiming its history. In 2007 Spanish parliament passed the Historical Memory Law designed to establish measures to ‘recognise and broaden the rights in favour of those who suffered persecution or violence during the Civil War and the Dictatorship.’ Although a step in the right direction, the Law has still not gone far enough and has often been ineffective or stifled at municipal level. Franco’s continued presence at the Valle de los Caídos exemplifies this. Apart from Cambodia, Spain has more mass graves than any other country in the world. Eighty years on from the end of the Civil War, many families still have no idea what happened to their relatives.

If the plans to exhume Franco are successful, he will most likely be removed to the Pardo cemetery in Madrid where his wife is buried. The Valle de los Caídos, is expected to be turned into what it should have been in the first place – a monument for reconciliation. It is hoped that the names of its 33,847 dead will be listed for public display and that it will include a museum to the Civil War.