SPAIN’S Socialist government is to exhume and relocate the remains of dictator Francisco Franco on Thursday, concluding a process that has sparked fervent debate and a legal battle.

The government said the remains would be taken from the grandiose mausoleum at the Valley of the Fallen complex outside Madrid and moved to a cemetery close to the capital where the Franco family has a crypt.

The government plans to transport the remains over the 21-mile distance by helicopter. It said it will begin the exhumation operation at 8.30am GMT on Thursday.

The statement said the operation will be a private affair, with only Franco’s relatives and some government officials allowed to attend. The media will be able to witness it from outside.

The procedure was authorised after the Supreme Court recently dismissed the objections by Franco’s family, ending months of delays.

The interim government is pushing ahead with the exhumation before Spain holds a general election on November 10.

Franco ruled Spain between 1939 and 1975 after he led a rebellion against the Spanish democratic government in 1936 that started the Spanish Civil War.

For many years, thousands of people commemorated the anniversaries of his death – on November 20, 1975 – in Madrid.

Although Franco’s popularity has waned immensely, the exhumation has been criticised by the dictator’s relatives, Spain’s three main right-wing parties and some members of the Catholic Church for opening the country’s old political wounds.

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It comes during a week of turbulence in Spain, with Spanish leader Pedro Sanchez travelling to Barcelona, the epicentre of huge protests sparked by the jailing of Catalan independence leaders, to meet injured police officers and hold talks with officials in charge of security.

Clashes between separatists and police waned over the weekend after five successive nights of riots in Barcelona and other Catalan cities.