Court mulling first exhumation at Valley of the Fallen monument

For the first time ever, the Spanish courts have been presented with a civil lawsuit demanding the exhumation of bodies from the Valley of the Fallen, the enormous Francoist monument outside Madrid where over 30,000 victims of Spain’s Civil War dead lie buried.

Purificación Lapeña Garrido, whose grandfather and great-uncle were executed by General Francisco Franco’s forces at the beginning of the Civil War (1936-1939) and allegedly buried in the Valley of the Fallen, is trying to recover their remains through legal channels.

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