Charlie Smith
THE Government has seized General Franco’s summer palace, telling the dead dictator’s family its sale was ‘fraudulent’.
Pazo de Meiras in Galicia, valued at €5 million, was allegedly bought for Franco from the forced donations of local people during the Spanish Civil War.
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But the stunning 19th century property has now been claimed by the Ministry of Justice, which said it has a ‘solid argument, documents and legal position to defend public ownership’.
Legal action has been launched against Franco’s relatives, over the illegal sale of the property to a pro-Franco organisation in 1938, and then on to Franco in 1941.
However the move has been blasted by Franco’s grandson Francis Franco, who labelled it part of a ‘strategy of retaliation’ by Spain’s socialist government.
It comes as Pedro Sanchez’s PSOE administration has pushed on with a plan to exhume the remains of the Fascist dictator.
He is currently buried in a tomb in the Valley of the Fallen, a memorial on the outskirts of Madrid to victims from both sides of the Civil War.
The Spanish Supreme court blocked his exhumation, just days before it was planned for June 10.
