Spain passes decree to exhume Franco remains

Spain's Socialist government passed a decree yesterday allowing the exhumation of the remains of Francisco Franco from his vast mausoleum.

"We are celebrating 40 years of a democratic Spain, of a stable and mature constitutional order... and this is not compatible with a public tomb where we continue to glorify Franco," Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo told a news conference following a cabinet meeting that approved the decree.

The exhumation, which is fiercely opposed by the late dictator's descendants, could take place at the end of the year, she said.

General Franco, who ruled Spain with an iron fist from the end of the 1936-39 civil war until his death in 1975, is buried in an imposing basilica carved into a mountain-face just 50 kilometres outside of Madrid.

Built by Franco's regime between 1940 and 1959 -- in part by the forced labour of some 20,000 political prisoners -- the monument holds the remains of around 37,000 dead from both sides of the civil war, which was triggered by Franco's rebellion against an elected Republican government.

It was long used as a place to pay tribute to Franco on the anniversary of his death, but that was stopped by a 2007 law.