Fernando G. Urbaneja | The appearance of Franco 15 days before a general election forms part of an electoral strategy, but there is no evidence that it will have the slightest influence on how people vote.Spaniards worry about the economy, employment, wages and public goods related to the welfare state. The Franco business is rabble-rousing, fireworks and distraction.

Fernando G. Urbaneja | Throughout Thursday all the television stations will offer the spectacle of the journey of Franco´s coffin, buried 44 years ago underneath a marble grave stone weighing more than a thousand kilo in a family vault (although property of the state) to a public cemetery, el Pardo, 36km from the basilica of Cuelgamuros en El Escorial. For some this is an act of justice against the dictator, for others an unnecessary spectacle which oxygenates those few and irrelevant nostalgic for Francoism. Perhaps an opportunity for that peculiar sentiment of necrophilia which forms a peculiar part of human nature.