The dictator’s mausoleum in the Valley of the Fallen, in the outskirts of Madrid, had become a site of pilgrimage for far-right supporters and fascist nostalgics. The Supreme Court accepted the government’s plans to bury Franco’s corpse alongside that of his wife, Carmen Polo, in the Mingorrubio cemetery.

Judges rejected a proposal from Franco’s relatives to relocate the remains to the Almudena Cathedral, where many feared Franco’s supporters would find a new site of pilgrimage in downtown Madrid. Spanning four decades, Franco’s dictatorship started as a result of a coup d’état against the democratically elected government, which led to the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).

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