Governing socialists say FNFF fails to comply with legislation that forbids any attempt to glorify regime

Spain’s socialist-led government has begun legal action to shut down a group that exists to promote and preserve the legacy of Gen Francisco Franco, the dictator who ruled the country for almost 40 years.

In a statement on Thursday morning, Spain’s culture minister, Ernest Urtasun, said he had initiated judicial proceedings to have the National Francisco Franco Foundation (FNFF) dissolved because of its failure to comply with legislation that forbids any attempt to glorify the Franco regime.

Pension top-ups criticised as it is revealed one officer has been accused of acts of torture

More than four decades after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco, the Spanish government has said it continues to pay bonuses to 115 police officers who were awarded medals during his regime, including one officer accused of multiple acts of torture.

The revelation came last week in response to a parliamentary question about a custom of boosting the pensions of officers who win awards. With each medal yielding a pension bonus of as much as 15%, the question asked how many now-retired officers had been given honours before 1979 and, as such, receive topped-up pensions from the Spanish government.

Spanish dictator’s body moved from tomb in the Valley of the Fallen to lie alongside his wife

• Spain exhumes Franco’s remains – in pictures

A little before lunchtime on Thursday, a helicopter carrying a single body freshly plucked from Spain’s largest mass grave took off from the Valley of the Fallen outside Madrid, climbed above the mountains and disappeared into the bright October sky.

Unlike many of the other 33,832 people buried in the valley’s concrete and granite chambers, this individual did not meet his fate on a battlefield or in an air raid. Nor was he put up against a wall and shot, as so many were during the Spanish civil war.

Dictator’s tomb to be opened and coffin taken to cemetery near Madrid on Thursday

Spain’s socialist government is finally to fulfil one of its key promises when the remains of General Franco are exhumed from the austere splendour of the Valley of the Fallen and transferred to his family mausoleum outside Madrid.

If all goes to plan, the 1.5-tonne slab that has covered the dictator’s tomb will be lifted at 10.30am on Thursday and the coffin removed and flown by helicopter or taken by road to Mingorrubio-El Pardo municipal cemetery.

Government says transfer of body to municipal cemetery will occur as soon as possible

The remains of Francisco Franco are to be moved from the state mausoleum in which he was buried to a municipal cemetery to lie alongside the former dictator’s wife, after Spain’s supreme court ruled in favour of exhuming his body.

The ruling on Tuesday is likely to be the final chapter after decades of controversy over Franco’s burial place. Removing his body from its tomb in the Valley of the Fallen memorial near Madrid, where he was placed after his death in 1975, has been a priority of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE) since it came to power in June last year.

Justice ministry says sale to dictator of summer residence in Galicia was fraudulent

Spain’s socialist government has claimed ownership of Francisco Franco’s summer palace in Galicia in its latest clash with the former dictator’s descendants, who have opposed a plan to exhume his remains from a state mausoleum outside Madrid.

The decision to move Franco from his tomb in the Valley of the Fallen, which is carved into a mountainside to the north of the capital and seen by many Spaniards as a monument to fascism, was suspended by the country’s supreme court in June pending appeals by his family.

Critics say ruling suspending exhumation of dictator’s remains legitimises 1936 coup

Leading historians have rubbished the Spanish supreme court’s claim that General Franco was head of state from October 1936, almost three years before his rebellion secured victory in the Spanish civil war.

The claim was made in the court’s latest ruling on the socialist government’s tortuous efforts to exhume the dictator’s remains from his hulking mausoleum and have him reburied in the family vault.