Not Dead Enough
Forty years ago today, Spain changed. It began with a death. The death that was announced on black and white national television by the teary-eyed Prime Minister, Carlos Arias Navarro. "Franco ha muerto." The fascist dictator of Spain for almost forty desolate years was eighty-two years old. He had been in and out of the hospital for the past year. One could say he died of old age and the complications of Parkinson's disease. But before he died, in September he signed the last death sentences for five men. They were the last to be executed in Spain before the death penalty was abolished in 1978. Franco was ornery to the last. He was buried in the mausoleum built by Republican prisoners of war under conditions Hitler would have approved of. This mausoleum, the Valle de los Caídos , has an enormous white cross. It actually occupies a small mountain that was hollowed out to create it. Driving northwest on the A-6 out of Madrid, you can see it to the left as you approach...