The last public statue in Spain of the former dictator Francisco Franco has been finally removed from the town gates of Melilla, a Spanish enclave and autonomous metropolis on the north-west African coast.
A group of workmen took down the statue on February 23, by using a mechanical digger and heavy drills to lift the statue by its neck and took it away on a pickup truck.
The statue was erected in 1978, three years after Franco’s loss of life to commemorate his position as commander of the Spanish Legion within the Rif struggle, a battle fought within the Nineteen Twenties by Spain and France towards the Berber tribes of the Rif mountainous area of Morocco.
“This is a historic day for Melilla,” Elena Fernandez Trevino, in charge of schooling and tradition within the enclave, said after the native meeting voted to remove the statue, adding that it was “the only statue dedicated to a dictator still in the public sphere in Europe”.
The statue was taken down as Spain marked 40 years since a failed military coup by Guardia Civil officers who were loyal to Franco, stormed into the parliament and fired shots over the heads of Members of Parliament who were preparing to vote in a new government.
