Primo de Rivera will be exhumed on Monday from the Cuelgamuros Valley

The Government has set April 24 as the date on which the exhumation of José Antonio Primo de Rivera from inside the Basilica of the Valley of the Fallen will proceed, according to sources from the Executive branch confirmed to this newspaper.. The remains of the founder of the Falange are buried in a tomb inside the temple a few meters from where Francisco Franco was buried, whose body was also exhumed and relocated to the Mingorrubio (El Pardo) cemetery in October 2019.

The departure of the founder of the Falange de Cuelgamuros, as from now on the Valley of the Fallen will be officially called, is a consequence of the definitive approval of the Democratic Memory Law, which prevents Primo de Rivera from continuing to be buried in that place. And it will be 34 days before the municipal and regional elections are held on May 28.

“It is one more step in the redefinition of the Valley so that no person has a pre-eminent place. It is one more step in what we are doing in the Cuelgamuros Valley so that no person or any ideology that evokes the dictatorship is exalted, as mandated by the Memory Law”, stated Félix Bolaños, Minister of the Presidency , Relations with the Courts and Democratic Memory.

From the Government they refused to give information on how the exhumation will proceed, alluding to “security reasons” and “reasons of family privacy.”

The family of José Antonio Primo de Rivera had gone before the Government and had begun the process to exhume his mortal remains from the Valley of the Fallen. Thus, their descendants had requested the different administrative and legal procedures to do so and avoid “a public display” and “humiliation” by the Executive, according to a statement six months ago.

€8,630

The budget for the removal of the granite slab under which the remains of Primo de Rivera lie and its replacement by six black marble slabs amounts to 8,630 euros, according to the municipal act that authorized the works, reports Efe

A few days after the definitive approval of the Law of Democratic Memory and before its entry into force, the relatives of Primo de Rivera contacted the abbot of Valle de los Caídos and the General Directorate of Public Health of the Community of Madrid and requested to the City Council of San Lorenzo de El Escorial the necessary permits to take the remains of the founder of the Falange to the San Isidro cemetery in Madrid.

As the nephews explained in a statement, they did it to comply with the will of their uncle to be buried in a sacred cemetery and in accordance with the Catholic rite.. His request was met by the San Lorenzo de El Escorial City Council last month, when it approved the urban planning license for the removal of the tombstone.

The date chosen for the exhumation coincides with the day that will mark the 120th anniversary of the birth in Madrid of the founder of the Falange.

Primo de Rivera was shot by Republican combatants, during the Civil War, on November 20, 1936, and after various vicissitudes his remains were taken to the Valley of the Fallen in 1959, after the inauguration of the compound that Francisco Franco ordered to be built, presided over by a gigantic stone cross.

His tomb is the only individual that remains in the mausoleum after the transfer of Franco, since the more than 33,000 buried, combatants from both sides of the Civil War, who rest in the columbariums outside the temple are in collective locations.

Also under the mandate of the Law of Memory, in the early hours of November 3, the remains of the Francoist general Gonzalo Queipo de Llano and his wife Genoveva Martí were exhumed.