Old Grand-Dad

Last month, Figueres - suit­ably enough for a town which is home to the Dalí The­atre Mu­seum - hosted a fes­ti­val called Ingràvid ('Weight­less') aimed at pro­mot­ing con­tem­po­rary art that is both ac­ces­si­ble and at­trac­tive to the gen­eral pub­lic. One of the pieces was a Fiat which had been care­fully plas­tered with Fran­coist in­signia by artist Núria Güell, and which was sup­posed to be dri­ven slowly along the streets of Figueres to re­mind peo­ple that Fran­co­ism was still preva­lent in Spain, forty years after Franco's death. I say 'sup­posed', be­cause this par­tic­u­lar move­able in­stal­la­tion was banned by the mayor on the grounds that Fran­co­ism is no longer preva­lent and there­fore parad­ing its sym­bols around town would make no sense. The cu­ra­tor of the fes­ti­val, Ester Pujol, was un­der­stand­ably fu­ri­ous. Even so, I found my­self ask­ing, was the mayor being fab­u­lously ob­tuse, or did he have a point? After all, just how preva­lent is Fran­co­ism today? It's true that in Tor­tosa there's a hideous mon­u­ment to those who fought on the Fas­cist side in the Civil War. And then there's the Fran­cisco Franco Foun­da­tion in Madrid - ded­i­cated to fos­ter­ing a pos­i­tive image of the dic­ta­tor - which has re­ceived gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies from the Pop­u­lar Party (cur­rently in power in Spain). And the rem­nants of the Falange - Franco's equiv­a­lent of Mus­solini's Black­shirts - are still a le­galised po­lit­i­cal party. But that would seem to be about it. So it struck me that Ms Güell might have been over­do­ing it a bit with her em­bell­ished au­to­mo­bile. That night, how­ever, Span­ish pub­lic tele­vi­sion (TVE) broad­cast a prime time in­ter­view by Bertín Os­borne (the War­ren Beatty of Span­ish show busi­ness) and Franco's grand­daugh­ter, Car­men Martínez-Bordiú. The in­ter­view took place in her liv­ing room, which was jam-packed with pho­tographs of the dic­ta­tor as well as some cu­ri­ous paint­ings of women's but­tocks (whose praises Os­borne lost no time in singing). The in­ter­view was clearly in­tended as light en­ter­tain­ment, with the in­ter­viewer field­ing in­nocu­ous, feath­er­weight ques­tions (“Your grand­fa­ther was the most pow­er­ful man in Spain; how do you feel about that?”). In­deed, Os­borne and Martínez-Bordiú chat­ted and laughed about the lat­ter's grand­fa­ther as if he'd been just one more gra­cious old gen­tle­man, with not the tini­est al­lu­sion to him being re­spon­si­ble for over 200,000 deaths - many of them ju­di­cial mur­ders (not least, that of the Cata­lan pres­i­dent Lluís Com­pa­nys in 1940) - or his hav­ing ru­ined the lives of mil­lions of cit­i­zens thanks to his in­sis­tence on run­ning a re­lent­lessly Fas­cist regime right to the bit­ter end. Ms Güell, per­haps you should get your satir­i­cal car out and start dri­ving: you're needed ur­gently, and not just in Figueres.