Three people were arrested this Monday (24th) in Spain, after police clashed with supporters of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Spanish fascist Falange movement that supported the Francoist regime, whose body was exhumed from a mausoleum near Madrid.
Police worked to contain around 150 Falange supporters gathered outside the San Isidro cemetery in southern Madrid, where he was taken to be reburied. They gave a fascist salute and sang the Falangist anthem “Cara al Sol”.
The three arrests were for public disorder, according to a police source.
Earlier, protesters at a smaller gathering outside the gates of the complex formerly known as the Valley of the Fallen also gave the fascist salute, held up banners saying “José Antonio present” and chanted “Long live Spain” as his hearse drove by.
The exhumation of Primo de Rivera, which comes after the removal of the remains of dictator Francisco Franco in 2019, is part of a plan to convert the complex built by Franco on a mountain near the capital into a memorial to the 500,000 people killed during the Spanish civil war of 1936-39.
The remains of around 34,000 people, many of them victims of the Franco regime, are buried anonymously in the complex.
The Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, welcomed the exhumation on Friday (21). “No person or ideology that evokes dictatorship should be honored or exalted there,” he said at the time.
The Falange party continues to exist, but it has no seats in Parliament. In 2019, anti-immigrant Vox became the first far-right party to gain representation in Spain’s Parliament since the restoration of democracy in 1977.
Source: CNN Brasil
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