This Europe: Outrage over state subsidy for General Franco's secret archive

Spanish historians are protesting at the huge subsidies granted by Madrid to computerise the archives of General Franco, which remain closed to the public.

Angry historians have described as shocking and a disgrace the news that the Francisco Franco Foundation, run by the Fascist leader's daughter Carmen, received €83,000 (£52,000) of taxpayers' money last year. The sum is more than 10 per cent of the Culture Ministry's annual budget for modernising archives and its largest single donation.

Javier Tusell, a leading historian, said: "It's a disgraceful scam. The Franco Foundation receives more government funding than any comparable body and is the only one that is closed to the public. They say they want to digitalise everything but that's long-winded, expensive and unnecessary. The papers are all classified, that's sufficient. It's time this was declared a national archive open to all."

The archive holds some 27,000 documents, mostly relating to Franco's regime from 1939 to 1975, that historians say were taken from his Prado palace by the family as he lay dying. The archive is comparable to those of Italy's Benito Mussolini and the Portuguese Fascist leader Antonio Salazar, which are both open to the public.

The historian Antonio Elorza, who accuses the conservative government of "unprofessional behaviour", said: "For the state to pay for the recovery of papers that were taken from the state and are kept private is an incomprehensible and sinister scandal."