Spain scraps 33 titles handed out by dictator Franco to family and aides

Spain abolished 33 aristocratic titles handed out by dictator Francisco Franco and his successor to loyal lieutenants and family on Friday as a new “Democratic Memory” law took effect.
The measure affects two of Franco’s grandchildren, as well as the descendants of several of his top generals, ministers and other high-ranking officials. Franco ruled Spain from 1939 to 1975 after leading a military coup against the Second Republic’s elected leftist Popular Front government, which resulted in a three-year civil war that cost 500,000 lives.
The law, which recently cleared its final parliamentary hurdle in the upper house, equates “glorifying perpetrators of crimes against humanity” with humiliating the Franco regime’s victims and strikes out titles that exalt the civil war and military dictatorship.
While most titles were granted by Franco himself as a reward for loyalty, five people affected by the law were ennobled by his successor as head of state, former King Juan Carlos I, in the first months of his reign following Franco’s death.