The EconomistOctober 26th 2019 Europe 49A
fter dyingin his bed in 1975 General
Francisco Franco, Spain’s dictator for
36 years, was buried in haste at the Valley
of the Fallen, a grandiose monument on
a mountainside outside Madrid that he
built to celebrate his victory in the Span-
ish civil war. But his presence, in one of
only two named tombs amid 34,000
anonymous war dead, is now seen as an
aberration. On October 24th, in an oper-
ation organised by Pedro Sánchez, the
Socialist prime minister, and attended by
22 of Franco’s descendants, his coffin
was due to be dug up and then moved to a
quiet public cemetery on the outskirts of
the capital, where his wife lies.
Mr Sánchez was carrying out a resolu-
tion of the Spanish parliament and a
promise he made on becoming prime
minister last year. It took more than a
year to overcome legal objections from
Franco’s family—who wanted to rebury
him, prominently, in the crypt of Ma-
drid’s cathedral—and the threatened
disobedience of the Benedictine priorwho administers the Valley. The Vatican
slapped down the prior; last month the
Supreme Court ruled unanimously that
the government could proceed.
“No enemy of democracy deserves a
place of worship nor institutional re-
spect,” Mr Sanchez said of the court
ruling. More Spaniards agree with him
than disagree. But the delay means the
exhumation comes barely a fortnight
before a general election, the fourth in as
many years. The Socialists hope it will
rally their faithful. Only Vox, a far-right
party, actively opposes what it calls a
“profanation” of Franco’s tomb. The
conservative opposition would rather
discuss the future.
The Socialists want to turn the Valley
into “a museum of memory”. Their oppo-
nents fear that would lead to the writing
of history by one side again. Modern
Spain is not in thrall to Franco’s ghost.
Most Spaniards have no memory of him.
But the country has yet to agree on the
past. It may never do so.Digging up Franco
Spanish historyMADRID
An exhumation that is both historical duty and electoral stuntT
he frenchare accustomed to angry
farmers paralysing traffic. In the Neth-
erlands, which prides itself on consensual
government, such agricultural aggression
used to be rare. Yet over the past month
Dutch farmers have turned stubborn. On
October 1st and again on October 16th,
thousands of them parked their tractors on
The Hague’s main parade grounds, clam-
ouring that proposed environmental regu-
lations would put them out of business.
“The Netherlands without farmers would
be like Amsterdam without whores,” one
banner proclaimed. (It rhymes in Dutch.)
The source of the conflict is nitrogen
pollution, which comes in two forms: ni-
tric oxides (NOx), mainly from combustion
engines, and ammonia, mostly from fertil-
iser and animal waste. These lead to smog,
algae blooms and other problems. In May
the Netherlands’ Council of State ruled that
the government’s system for limiting such
pollution was too lax for European law.
Farmers, especially those with high-
density cattle stalls, were thrown into cha-
os. They are not the only ones bellowing.
Construction causes NOx emissions too, so
up to €14bn worth of housing and infra-
structure projects have been called into
question until the government can come
up with a new permit system. Business or-
ganisations and unions are incensed.
The group that has brought the Dutch
construction and agriculture sectors to a
standstill is a tiny non-profit, Mobilisation
for the Environment (mob), that operates
on a shoestring budget with seven staff. In
2017 it went to the European Court of Jus-
tice (ecj) to challenge a system which the
Dutch had introduced two years earlier.
Under the European Habitats Directive, all
eumembers must limit nitrogen pollution
to protect a network of wildlife reserves
known as Natura 2000. Unlike other coun-
tries, the Netherlands allowed farmers and
industry to take measures they hopedwould reduce nitrogen levels (such as ex-
perimental air-scrubbers), and count the
expected reductions against new emis-
sions—even before gathering evidence
that they worked. The ecjfound that this
was not good enough. The Council of State
agreed, scrapping the permit system. Fully
18,000 projects with recent or pending per-
mits are up in the air. Hundreds of sites lie
idle: roadworks in Gelderland, a residen-
tial district of 470 houses in Roermond, ex-
pansion of an airport east of Amsterdam.
Polls at first showed that the Dutch
overwhelmingly sympathised with the
farmers, and four provincial governments
have backed down, abandoning the plans
they had drawn up to meet the govern-
ment’s new recommendation. On October
14th, though, the farmers crossed a line. In
a protest in the provincial capital of Gro-
ningen, one drove a tractor through a barri-
er into a bicycle-jammed street, while an-
other used his to smash open the doors of
the provincial legislature. Many Dutch pol-
iticians worry that the farmers’ actions are
undermining the country’s tradition of
compromise by showing that extreme ges-
tures work. Looser regulations on agricul-
ture would mean tighter ones on the con-
struction industry, which is planning its
own demonstration in The Hague on Octo-
ber 30th. Any new system for limiting ni-
trogen emissions will have to involve more
than airy promises. 7THE HAGUE
A tiny environmental group wins a
huge victory
Dutch environmentalism
Nitro dissidents
Aggrobusiness