Forensic scientists have begun exhuming the bodies of 128 victims of the Spanish Civil War from the former mausoleum of General Francisco Franco near Madrid, the government said on Monday.
The exhumation, which is being carried out as an election campaign heats up, is the first involving people whose bodies were moved from other parts of Spain after the 1936-1939 war and reburied without their families' consent in a monument built by Franco in the Valley of Cuelgamuros, formerly known as Valley of the Fallen.
It is likely to make Franco's four-decade dictatorship, which still divides Spanish society, a topic of passionate discussion as Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez seeks reelection.
The remains of some 34,000 people, many of them victims of Franco's regime, are buried anonymously in the crypt of the basilica carved into a mountainside northwest of Madrid.
Passing a law that makes it possible for relatives to identify victims who are buried in about 2,400 unmarked mass graves around Spain was one of the first policies implemented by Sanchez when he came to power in 2018.
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