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Merry, hidden behind a hat, leaves her brother Francis's house on the day of exhumation. GTRES

Franco's favorite granddaughter shouted at Dolores Delgado: "You will be happy with this desecration, madam minister"

Franco's exhumation: Who is who in the dictator's family?

The secular school and 'progre' where the Franco family now lives in Madrid

Cristóbal and Merry, the only relatives who have been able to see Franco in his exhumation

A week after the transfer of the remains of Franco from the Valley of the Fallen to the family mausoleum of the cemetery of El Pardo, his relatives continue to emit signs of his disagreement with the exhumation.

Both Francis Franco and his brother Jaime Martínez-Bordiú placed preconstitutional flags with a black crepe on the facade of their house, as a sign of mourning and protest. The eldest grandson took his to the Valley of the Fallen although he was prevented from deploying it on his grandfather's coffin. Jaime Martínez-Bordiú's was still waving days later on one of the balconies.

But it was María del Mar Martínez-Bordiú Merry (63), the general's favorite granddaughter , who made her discontent more visible. Merry and his brother Cristóbal were the two members appointed by the family to represent them while the slab was raised and the coffin was removed.

Cristóbal maintained a respectful attitude all the time , but the sepulchral silence of the ceremony, never better said, was interrupted by the loud imprecations of his sister to the Minister of Justice, Dolores Delgado , who took minutes as a notary major of the Kingdom, also directed to the general secretary of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños , and to the undersecretary, Antonio Hidalgo , witnesses of the whole process.

Several grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Franco were in charge of removing the coffin on their shoulders.

"May the curse for digging up a dead man fall upon you . " Or, "What a shame! You are anti Spain. You will be happy with this desecration, Minister," Merry snapped at Dolores Delgado, who did not answer or make any gesture during the two hours they remained inside the basilica.

"Here we are, grandfather, we have come with these defilers," that granddaughter was still loud, of which Franco was proud of her independent character and strong personality. Franco baptized her for that as La ferrolana .

Away from Spain for years, practically invisible in the life of society, Merry is the most unknown and enigmatic of the seven children of Carmen Franco and Cristóbal Martínez-Bordiú.

Merry's first appearance outside the family was when his courtship was made public with Jimmy Jiménez-Arnau , writer and journalist of a good family, funny and cosmopolitan.

His wedding was held at Pazo de Meirás in 1977 , two years after Franco's death. The ceremony and its report made history for something more than for the bride's last name. It was the first wedding in history that was sold to a heart magazine. One million pesetas, 6,000 euros now.

Jimmy directly negotiated the price with Jaime Peñafiel , star reporter of the magazine, since Antonio Sánchez Gómez, the editor and owner, was not very much in favor of buying exclusive and less dealing directly with the seller. Merry waited for her fiance in a bar, across the street from Michelangelo 1, while Jimmy entered and left the newsroom, looking for a better price than he later consulted with his girlfriend. It seemed like a low offer to her, but Antonio Sánchez did not increase a peseta more than a million offered and they had to settle. It was an important amount for the time , the wedding would have been better paid by any other magazine, but the prestige of Hola made up for the discount.

Merry and Jimmy Jiménez-Arnau, at the time of their courtship, in the late 70s.

The notoriety of the bride and groom and the deployment of that wedding with the dictator already disappeared, brought the couple their inconveniences. After years of censorship and reverence, the press and the country wanted the Franks and as soon as the first problems between the marriage arose, the media shot mercilessly.

They broke two years later as a result of a precarious economy, of having no trade or benefit and of living without heating in the shadow of a shady mansion that the Franco had on the outskirts of Madrid .

Merry and Jiménez Arnau disputed in the courts the custody of their daughter Leticia, with accusations and mutual denunciations, while Jimmy began to publish intimacies and miseries of his political family.

She then put land in between and moved to the Canary Islands with the girl. There he taught English and met Gregor Tamler , a personal trainer with whom he became fond of sports and healthy living. To escape the press and the demands of her ex-husband, the couple went to New York where they married, to settle later in the Virgin Islands. The marriage ended in divorce in 1991. Merry's life became more anonymous and invisible.

Lately she lives in Miami, where Leticia, her daughter, who has made her a grandmother and has been married since 2008 with Marcos Sagrera Palomo, a Salvadoran millionaire. The wedding was held in Pazo de Meirás, like that of his parents.

Merry is back, but not to stay. Apart from participating with his brothers in the distribution of his mother's inheritance and the sale of his properties, Merry returned to Spain to shout his passionate proclamations against a decision that the Congress of Deputies approved without votes against in May 2017. Merry loved his grandfather so much that he surely forgot that Franco and Franco were already dead.

Absences from exhumation

There were a total of 22 family members, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and spouses, who attended Franco's exhumation in the Valley of the Fallen. But also two absences, that of Cynthia Rossi, the youngest daughter of Carmen Martínez-Bordiú, born of her marriage to the French antiquarian, Jean-Marie Rossi. And that of Leticia, the daughter that Merry Martínez-Bordiú had while she was married to the journalist Jimmy Jiménez-Arnau. Apparently, Cynthia, who lives in Bordeaux since her wedding with Dr. Benjamin Rouget, had just given birth to her second child. Leticia, meanwhile, lives in Miami with her husband and family and did not consider it appropriate to make such a long trip for such a short ceremony.

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