Spanish police watching Franco’s former summer palace as family told to leave without taking goods

The Pazo de Meiras has been reclaimed by the Spanish state

Credit: Cover

Spanish police have been posted outside the former summer palace of dictator Franciso Franco as a court on Monday ordered an inventory of the property amid allegations the family plans to strip it as they comply with an eviction order. 

The A Coruña court, which earlier this year ruled that the family return the property to the state, issued the ruling after newspaper reports that the dictator’s grandchildren were planning to fill up to 50 removal vans with goods.

Aside from paintings by Spanish masters such as Zuloaga, valuable glassware, tapestries and hunting trophies, the Pazo de Meirás’s most controversial contents are two 12th-century statues of the prophets Isaac and Abraham.

Local authorities are fighting in the courts for the pair of statues to be returned to their original setting in Santiago de Compostela cathedral.

Local police have been ordered to watch the entrance to the 16-acre property near the town of Sada on the northern coast of the region of Galicia.

“We must have knowledge, not only of the Pazo but also of its contents, in order to follow the letter of the law with regard to a property we believe to be of public ownership,” Carmen Calvo, Spain’s first deputy prime minister, said on Monday.

The dictator’s grandchildren have appealed the court’s September ruling that General Franco was never the lawful owner of the mansion.

The Telegraph asked the Franco family lawyer to confirm the heirs’ plans but received no immediate reply.

The regional government of Galicia warned the Franco family that the statues of Isaac and Abraham have been given protected status, meaning the heirs must inform of any plans to move them from their current site in the palace’s chapel.  

Benito Portela, Sada’s mayor, said the Pazo’s protected status as a historical monument meant that “the contents and containing structure are intrinsically related” and therefore not simple family possessions.

Mr Portela believes the building should be turned into a centre for the recovery of historical memory about the Franco era.