MADRID — The Spanish government on Thursday began exhuming the remains of the former dictator Gen. Francisco Franco from the underground basilica that he built after winning his country’s civil war. The move has prompted criticism that, coming just two weeks before a national election, it will reopen old rifts in Spanish society.
The exhumation followed a yearlong judicial battle between the caretaker Socialist government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and relatives of Franco who had sought to reverse the decision.
Mr. Sánchez recently told the United Nations General Assembly that Spain was taking the action because “no enemy of democracy deserves a place of worship or institutional respect.”
Franco’s remains are being moved from the basilica where he was buried in 1975 to a cemetery near Madrid that contains a family crypt where his wife is buried and that is beside El Pardo palace, which Franco used during his rule.
The government said the exhumation would cost about $70,000. But Pablo Casado, the leader of the opposition Popular Party, said last month that not “one cent” should be spent on exhuming Franco, who governed the country for almost four decades.
“I’m more worried about living dictators than dead ones,” Mr. Casado said. “I would like to speak about the Spain of my children rather than that of my grandparents.”
The exhumation was taking place ahead of a repeat national election on Nov. 10. The vote — the fourth in four years — was called after Mr. Sánchez and his Socialist party won the last election in April but then failed to garner sufficient support from smaller parties to form a government.
The most recent polls show that the Socialists are set to win next month’s vote, but the gap with the Popular Party has narrowed this month amid an outburst of separatist street violence in Catalonia. As was the case in April, the polls suggest that no party will come close to a parliamentary majority, an outcome that would set off another round of complicated coalition talks.
Ahead of the exhumation, a foundation dedicated to Franco’s memory urged sympathizers to gather on Thursday at the cemetery where he is being reburied to pay homage to a leader who “did so much for Spain and its greatness.”
The cemetery also contains the remains of several former ministers in Franco’s regime, as well as those of Rafael Trujillo, who governed the Dominican Republic for three decades until his assassination in 1961.
Mr. Sánchez promised to exhume Franco after taking office in June 2018. But his plan was delayed by legal challenges from the dictator’s relatives, who eventually lost their case before the Spanish Supreme Court.
The exhumation also turned into a heated political issue amid further party fragmentation in the country. Vox, an ultranationalist party that won its first seats in Parliament in April, strongly contested Franco’s removal from the basilica.
But associations that represent the victims of Franco have expressed hope that the exhumation will clear the way for an overhaul of the mausoleum, known as the Valley of the Fallen, which took 18 years to build.
The monument, which is maintained using state funds, is one of Europe’s largest mass graves. At least 33,000 people were buried there after the civil war, including both those who fought for Franco and others who sided with his Republican opponents.
It also contains the remains of prisoners of war whom Franco used as a labor force to build the mausoleum and basilica. About a third of the remains are unidentified, despite relatives’ efforts to locate their missing loved ones.
Last year, Mr. Sánchez said Franco’s exhumation should form part of a broader effort to revive a 2007 law that was intended to facilitate the opening of the more than 2,000 mass graves scattered across Spain and to identify the remains of those inside, most of whom died during the country’s civil war of 1936-1939.
The law was passed by a previous Socialist government but was later shelved and deprived of state funding by the conservative government led by Mariano Rajoy.