Final statue of dictator Franco eliminated in ‘historic day’ for Spain By Reuters

MELILLA, Spain (Reuters) – The final statue of former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco was eliminated on Tuesday from the town gates of Melilla, a Spanish enclave and autonomous metropolis on the northwest African coast.

With out a lot fanfare, a gaggle of workmen operated a mechanical digger and heavy drills to chip away on the brick platform on which the statue stood, lifted it off by a series round its neck and carted it away in bubble wrap on a pickup truck.

The statue, erected three years after Franco’s dying in 1978, commemorated his function as commander of the Spanish Legion within the Rif Warfare, a battle fought within the Nineteen Twenties by Spain and France towards the Berber tribes of the Rif mountainous area of Morocco.

“This can be a historic day for Melilla,” Elena Fernandez Trevino, in control of training and tradition within the enclave, stated on Monday after the native meeting voted to take the statue down, stating that it was “the one statue devoted to a dictator nonetheless within the public sphere in Europe.”

Solely the far-right Vox occasion voted towards the transfer, arguing that the statue celebrated Franco’s army function and never his dictatorship, so the Historic Reminiscence Regulation, a 2007 statute calling for the elimination of all symbols linked to Franco’s regime, mustn’t apply.

The Spanish authorities has made a number of high-profile removals off the again of this regulation, together with taking on the previous dictator’s summer season palace from his heirs final September.