SPAIN’S government started formal proceedings on Friday to dissolve an organisation promoting the legacy of the dictator, General Francisco Franco, who died in November 1975.
The Culture Ministry has sent a formal notification that it intends to shut down the Francisco Franco Foundation.
The move dates back to the 2022 Democratic Memory Law, designed to honour the victims of the dictatorship and to close institutions that promote Francoist ideology.
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In its resolution, the Culture Ministry said the foundation ‘glorifies Francoism and praises its leaders, which belittles and humiliates the victims’ of both the Civil War and the ensuing dictatorship.
The group ‘does not pursue objectives of general interest’ and ‘indirectly incites hatred’, it added.
The Foundation is run by members of Franco’s family, with the stated purpose of ‘disseminating and promoting the study and knowledge of his life, thought, legacy and work’.
Until her death in 2017, the his daughter, Carmen Franco, served as its honorary president.
The Foundation now has 10 days to present a formal response and challenge.
Sources from the ministry told the El Pais newspaper that the extinction process is novel.
“We must not forget that the foundation, as such, benefits fiscally.”
“Spaniards should not have to pay for these anti-democratic activities,” said government sources.
To reach this point, the Ministry of Culture commissioned two reports last year from the Registry of Foundations and the Secretary of State for Democratic Memory (SEMD).
The latter studied all the content of the foundation’s website ‘dedicated to the exaltation and apology of the coup d’état, the dictatorship and its leaders’ and also media coverage of the foundation between January 2018 and March 2025.
The reports to material that claim that ‘Francoism did not commit genocide, the Second Republic did’, or deny the events that happened during the bombing of Gernika during the Civil War or assure that the scandal of the stolen children is a lie.
There are also articles that exude a ‘propagandistic emphasis’, using concepts such as ‘uprising’ (instead of coup d’état) or ‘crusade'(instead of Civil War).
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