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The heirs of the Spanish dictator Franco were, this Thursday, forced to return the Paço de Meirás, in Galicia, to the Spanish State to fulfill the judicial sentence that granted the mansion to public property. The property has been in the general’s family for 82 years.
The process, which ended at 3 pm, began an hour and a half late because Heritage technicians had to visually check the state of the merchandise before handing over the keys, reports the Spanish newspaper “El País”.
Two of the assets present in the inventory of 697 items that the Franco family could not remove from the place, the Casa das Conchas and an annex to this property, were not part of what was claimed by the State, so they will remain in the hands of the heirs of the dictator.
“The content of Paço de Meirás will continue as it is today with the hope that there will be a final judgment,” explained Consuelo Castro Rey, head of the State Prosecutor’s Office, who underlined the feeling of “historical justice” of this act.
“It is the return of a good that reaches the hands from where it should never have come,” he added.
The judicial commission was received at the door of the building by several activists from the Galician Nationalist Bloc who chanted phrases with “the Palace belongs to the people”, “give us back what was stolen” and “Francoism never again.”
The order issued by the Court of First Instance of A Coruña stressed that the experts had to search the gardens and all the divisions of the Palace “to verify that the merchandise was in the same state in which it was when the inspection of the 11 of November”.
After the inspection, the keys to the Paço were handed over to the General State Administration, which has, as of Thursday, 20 business days to determine which merchandise can be delivered to the Franco family.
The Palace will reopen in five or six weeks.
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