The Court of First Instance number 70 of Madrid granted the State ownership of 559 assets of the Pazo de Meirás (Sada, La Coruña) claimed by the heirs of the dictator Francisco Franco.
A judgment of November 7, to which EFE had access, fully confirms the request of the State Attorney General’s Office, with the support of the Sada City Hall and the Xunta de Galicia, which It claimed two properties for national heritage, 409 for Spanish documentary heritage and 148 for Spanish historical heritage. It therefore establishes that all these assets belong to the State, imposes the payment of procedural costs on the heirs of Francisco Franco and opens a period of twenty days to file an appeal, which would be resolved by the Provincial Court of Madrid.
According to the judgment, part of these assets are linked to the figure of the writer Emilia Pardo Bazán -former owner of the Pazo de Meirás- and passed into the hands of the dictator’s family in 1938, when the building changed ownership. Others were introduced into the Pazo de Meirás between 1938 and 1975, when the property was used by the public as the summer residence of the then head of state.
SO, The decision favors the plaintiffs, who maintained that “the movable property that existed inside during this temporary period was assigned to the aforementioned public service”, in addition to defending that this did not prescribe it.
The initial request included five other Spanish historical heritage properties, although during the oral trial itself the State renounced it, since it is a series of paintings which “after a stylistic analysis, do not meet the requirements that must be met to attribute to them this value historical, and this regardless of whether they were or not. included before or after 1975”.
