Spain has exhumed the remains of fascist dictator General Franco who ruled over the country for nearly four decades. The government ordered that Franco's remains be relocated from its elaborate mausoleum near Madrid to a smaller, more low-key grave in a family crypt. It fulfils a key pledge of Spain's socialist government, which said Franco and his era of dictatorship should no longer be glorified in a modern democratic country. Tens of thousands of people died in Spain’s Civil War and under Franco's subsequent regime. His popularity has plummeted in the decades since his death in 1975, but a few hundred Franco supporters gathered near the tomb ahead of the exhumation, and a distant relative of the dictator, Macarena Martínez Bordiu, said she felt “outraged” and accused the government of “desecrating a tomb.” The Spanish daily newspaper El Pais celebrated the historic moment, leading with the headline: “Spain finishes with the last major symbol of the dictatorship.”
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