Chronicle: Franco's grave - even a bad place can be worse

An occasional tourist bus has found the valley of the fallen, in the mountains an hour from Madrid. It's mid-week and no rush here. If the attraction is the grossly oversized monument engraved in the rock or the person buried under the huge dome, I leave unsaid. Maybe it's the combination. Thus the myth of the Spanish dictator Franco who had his own mausoleum built.

A similar remnant from the dictatorship would have been completely unthinkable in Germany or Italy. But in Spain it has survived until one of the new ministers, apparently without anchoring it, promised last summer that the government would move the grave immediately. Where was then still unclear.

Next door to the Royal Palace in Madrid lies Franco's daughter buried. Here comes a battle stream with visitors. Her grave inside the cathedral is adorned with fresh flowers. A man kneels down, makes a sign with his fingers as he lets himself be photographed at her grave. Here Franco's family and friends want to relocate if they are forced to.

This has become a nightmare for the Spanish government. You simply fear a cult scene in the heart of the capital. But Pedro Sánchez's government has pulled this over itself. By acting in a hurry and pushing through a carelessly prepared change of law, an important detail was forgotten. Even a bad place can be worse.

Now a change of law is needed, an addition that prohibits the grave from being moved to a place that is open to the public. As usual, it would have been an embarrassing miss, which could easily be rectified by running to Parliament again. But for one of Europe's weakest governments, which seems to have a hard time even getting through their own budget, it's worse.

Now Franco is on everyone's lips more than 40 years after his death. Few might have seen this coming, that it would be a social government that brought the dictator's ghost to life. Franco's friends hope so clearly that the government's expertise means that the dictator is left alone in his monument instead.