Their Not Entirely Glorious Dead

Not content with defying the will of the British people over Gibraltar, the Spanish parliament has piled insult upon insult by voting to relocate the mortal remains of Tin-Pot Tessie's spiritual predecessor, Francisco Franco Bahamonde. The vote in the Cortes is non-binding and unlikely to be acted upon, much like the word of Tin-Pot Tessie and her cohorts; but it has clearly stirred up some painful memories and dubiously legitimate concerns. A scourge of traitors and crusher of saboteurs, as well as a noted enthusiast of patriotism, Christianity and family values, Franco is one of the only two named occupants of a vast kitsch mausoleum forty miles from Madrid; the other, in the interests of truth and reconciliation, being the founder of the Falangist party, the political wing of Franco's terrorist organisation. An estimated half-million victims of the civil war have had to rest content with anonymity, and with the symbolism of the hundred-and-fifty-metre cross commemorating the Church's famously vocal disapproval of Franco's inquisition.