{"id":115008,"date":"2021-02-24T15:49:09","date_gmt":"2021-02-24T07:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=115008"},"modified":"2021-02-24T15:49:11","modified_gmt":"2021-02-24T07:49:11","slug":"last-statue-of-dictator-franco-removed-in-historic-day-for-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=115008","title":{"rendered":"Last statue of dictator Franco removed in &#8216;historic day&#8217; for Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img src=\"https:\/\/apicms.thestar.com.my\/uploads\/images\/2021\/02\/24\/1054938.JPG\" alt=\"Local workers load a statue of former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco the last one remaining in Spain into a truck after removing it from its location in Melilla Spain February 23 2021.REUTERSJesus Blasco de Avellaneda\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>MELILLA (Spain), Feb 24 (NNN-AGENCIES) &#8212; The last statue of former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco was removed on Tuesday from the city gates of Melilla, a Spanish enclave and autonomous city on the northwest African coast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Without much fanfare, a group of workmen operated a mechanical digger and heavy drills to chip away at the brick platform on which the statue stood, lifted it off by a chain around its neck and carted it away in bubble wrap on a pickup truck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The statue, erected three years after Franco&#8217;s death in 1978, commemorated his role as commander of the Spanish Legion in the Rif War, a conflict fought in the 1920s by Spain and France against the Berber tribes of the Rif mountainous region of Morocco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;This is a historic day for Melilla,&#8221; Elena Fernandez Trevino, in charge of education and culture in the enclave, said after the local assembly voted to take the statue down, pointing out that it was &#8220;the only statue dedicated to a dictator still in the public sphere in Europe.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Only the far-right Vox party voted against the move, arguing that the statue celebrated Franco&#8217;s military role and not his dictatorship, so the Historical Memory Law, a 2007 statute calling for the removal of all symbols connected to Franco&#8217;s regime, should not apply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Spanish government has made several high-profile removals off the back of this law, including taking over the former dictator&#8217;s summer palace from his heirs last September. &#8212; NNN-AGENCIES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MELILLA (Spain), Feb 24 (NNN-AGENCIES) &#8212; The last statue of former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco was removed on Tuesday from the city gates of Melilla, a Spanish enclave and autonomous city on the northwest African coast. Without much fanfare, a group of workmen operated a mechanical digger and heavy drills to chip away at the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":114969,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[213,209],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115008"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/114969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}