Court: Palace belongs to Spain, not Franco heirs

Sept. 2 (UPI) -- A Spanish court Wednesday ordered the family of former dictator Francisco Franco to return a palace to the country.

The court of La Coruna ruled the palace, originally built for novelist Emilia Pardo Barzon in the late 19th century, was donated to the state and not Franco, who ruled Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975. It was built between 1893 and 1907.

The palace, known as the Pazo de Meiras, was used as Franco's summer retreat, but the court ruled that he claimed the property under his own name "in bad faith." His family put the property up for sale for $9.5 million.

Judge Marta Canales ruled that the property was given "to the generalissimo of the armies and the head of the national state" in 1938 and not to Franco by name. Canales said Franco's purchase of the palace in 1941 was "fiction carried out with the sole intention of putting the property in his name."

Spain has long struggled with Franco's far-right legacy as a dictator. His regime was blamed for the execution of thousands of lives during the Spanish Civil War and afterward. Last year, the country's Supreme Court ruled that his body should be exhumed from the historic Valley of the Fallen monument and moved to a cemetery in Madrid.