'Spain is fulfilling its duty to itself': Franco's remains exhumed

Spanish dictator's body moved from tomb in the Valley of the Fallen to lie alongside his wife

• Spain exhumes Franco's remains - in pictures

A little before lunchtime on Thursday, a helicopter carrying a single body freshly plucked from Spain's largest mass grave took off from the Valley of the Fallen outside Madrid, climbed above the mountains and disappeared into the bright October sky.

Unlike many of the other 33,832 people buried in the valley's concrete and granite chambers, this individual did not meet his fate on a battlefield or in an air raid. Nor was he put up against a wall and shot, as so many were during the Spanish civil war.