The Economist

The EconomistJuly 21st 2018 Europe 39

1

Spanish history

Disturbing Franco’s ghost

R

ATHER than a war memorial it is a

monument to a victory. Francisco

Franco whose military rebellion against

a turbulent parliamentaryrepublic trig-

gered the Spanish civil war and his 36-

year dictatorship conceived of the Valley

of the Fallen as a place to pay tribute to

those who died for what he called his

“Crusade”. Erected over 19 years using

forced labour it is designed to inspire fear

ratherthan sorrow. Its massive cross on a

rocky outcrop in the foothills of the Sierra

de Guadarrama is visible from the out-

skirts of Madrid and its basilica is a cold

vault bored 250 metres into the moun-

tainside. It contains the remainsof 3384 7

dead from both sides in the war. Only

two graves both in the basilica’s transept

are named: those of José Antonio Primo

de Rivera founder of Spain’s fascist party

and Franco himself.

In a vibrant democracy the site has

become an aberration. Last year parlia-

ment approved a resolution sponsored

by the Socialists andsupported by all

parties except the conservative People’s

Party ( PP) and a Catalan party to move

Franco’s remains rebury Primo de Rivera

in a less prominent place and “resignify”

the Valley as a democratic memorial.

Having unexpectedly ousted the PPfrom

government by means of a censure mo-

tion in May Pedro Sánchez the new

Socialist prime minister is poised to act

on the resolution. Franco’s remains will

be exhumed “in a very short space of

time” he told parliament on July 17th.

Only a few diehard franquistas active-

ly oppose Mr Sánchez’s decision. Several

hundred of them staged a protest at the

Valley recently. But the PPis discomfited

by the issue. Many of itsvoters are over

60; they grew up in the latter decades of

Franco’s rule which while still repres-

sive saw growing economic prosperity

and the creation of a middle class. And

many families have forebears who were

on opposing sides in the war.

“Our democracy will have symbols

that unite citizens” Mr Sánchez prom-

ised. That is a worthy aim. To achieve it

the Socialists should restrain their desire

to set up a “Truth Commission” about a

war that ended almost 80 years ago or

turn the Valley into a “museum of memo-

ry” which will doubtless be the version

imagined only by one side. Far better to

make it a simple national war memorial

help those who still don’t know what

happened to relatives killed in the war

and repression or where they are bu-

ried—and leave the rest to the historians.

SAN LORENZO DE EL ESCORIAL

Pedro Sánchez tackles the Valley of the Fallen

Time for Franco to go

T

URKEY’S right-wing nationalists have

seldom had it so good. The government

of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has em-

braced their main causes bombing Kurd-

ish insurgents at home and abroad pro-

moting militarism in education and using

siege mentality as foreign policy. Their sup-

porters have reaped the rewards of an alli-

ance with the ruling Justice and Develop-

ment ( AK) party. The ulkuculer  as they are

colloquially known have landed scores of

jobs in the bureaucracy amid the mass

purges that followed the attempted coup

of 2016.

They have emerged even stronger from

the presidential and parliamentary elec-

tions held simultaneously on June 24th.

Ulkucu voters helped propel Mr Erdogan to

a solid first-round victory. Their main po-

litical group the Nationalist Movement

Party ( MHP) won over 11% in the parlia-

mentary contest twice as much as most

polls predicted. The ruling AKparty which

ended up a few seats short of an outright

majority depends on the nationalists for

support. Despite earlierspeculation MrEr-

dogan who took his oath on July 9th—

flanked by democratic heavyweights such

as Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro

and Sudan’s leader Omar al-Bashir—did

not appoint any MHP members to his cabi-

net. (Instead he placed his son-in-law the

former energy minister in charge of the

economy a move the Turkish lira greeted

by losing 4% of its value against the dollar

in a matter of hours before rebounding

slightly.)

The ulkuculer  many of whom have

connections to Turkey’s criminal under-

world have been celebrating their good

fortune in style. Two days after the election

the MHP’s veteran leader Devlet Bahceli

took out a full-page advert in a number of

newspapers naming and reprimanding

every pollster and journalist who criti-

cised him in the run-up to the election.

“We’ll never forget what you did” he

wrote. Another prominent ulkucu Alaat-

tin Cakici a mafia boss convicted of order-

ing the assassination of his former wife

went slightly further threatening one of

the journalists Mr Bahceli had listed as

well as six others with murder.

Founded in the 1960s the MHP traces its

lineage to the 19th century when part of

the Ottoman elite embraced ethnic nation-

alism and the union of all Turkic peoples

as a remedy against the empire’s disinte-

gration. During much of the cold war the

ulkuculer were driven by opposition to

communism. (The MHP’s armed wing

known as the Grey Wolves spent years

fighting deadly street battles against left-

ists.) In the 1990s the ulkuculer backed a

scorched-earth offensive against the

armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party ( PKK) ac-

companied by many human-rights

abuses and opposed any expression of

Kurdish identity.

In the early years of AKrule when Tur-

key launched accession talks with the

European Union and implemented a

string of democratic reforms they receded

from view. Their courtship with political

Turkey’s ultra-nationalists

Dancing with

wolves

ISTANBUL

Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s pact with the

far right spells trouble