Dictator Franco's summer residence opens to public

Mar 25, 2011, 16:25 GMT

La Coruna, Spain - The summer residence of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco (1892-1975) opened its doors to the public on Friday, after his family lost a legal battle to keep it private.

The mansion known as Pazo de Meiras, which still belongs to the Franco family, is located near La Coruna in the north-western region of Galicia.

A group of Franco's victims insisted on it being opened to the public, but the family managed to limit the visits to only a part of the building and to four days a month.

The first visitors said they had seen Franco's hunting trophies, busts of the dictator, books and works of art inside the mansion, which had earlier belonged to writer Emilia Pardo Bazan.

The late 19th-century imitation castle with three towers was given to Franco by a group of supporters in 1939, the year the general won the three-year civil war he had sparked with his military uprising.

Franco then ruled Spain until his death in 1975.

The 'gift from the people' to Franco was financed with donations that were often not voluntary in practice. Locals have complained about having been forced from land that was given to Franco.

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