Pedro Sánchez's government has hit up against yet another unexpected difficulty in its attempts to exhume the dictator Francisco Franco. They do not now have the planning permission to carry out the necessary works. A Madrid court has accepted an appeal brought by an individual and agreed to provisionally suspend the measure. This is only the latest setback the executive has faced in moving the dictator, something they had originally hoped to do late last summer. They had redoubled their efforts to finally manage it before the snap election called for 28th April.
Newspaper El Independiente reports that it has seen the court ruling provisionally suspending the report from the town council of San Lorenzo del Escorial which had given permission for the work inside in the basilica of the Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen) necessary to move the dictator's remains to a less prominent location.
"[The court] doesn't see any special urgency in the exhumation of someone who was head of state, since he's been interred in the Santa Cruz basilica in the Valle de los Caídos since 23rd November 1975, in other words, for more than 44 years [sic]", argues judge José Yusty Bastarreche.