The Good General must be turning in his tumba. First, the last statue of him still standing in Madrid is hauled away in a most undignified manner. (Apparently there are now only two statues left in Spain, one in Santander and one in Zaragoza - but Izquierda Unida tells us that there are 167 references to the Franco regime in public places in Madrid alone - in street and school names, for example.) And now, there's talk of converting his greatest architectural legacy, an awful monument to awfulness, into a memorial for his victims. The Francisco Franco Foundation (a website designed with the same good taste and restraint as the Valle de los Caídos) has its own ideas about the removal of the statue, calling it "a belligerent act by Zapatero against Spanish history". That sounds about right. Sometimes, history benefits from a little belligerence.

(Today's title, by the way, is to celebrate the conference on the music of the Smiths in Manchester next week. Morrissey would probably be turning in his grave too, if he was dead.)
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