The question of what to do with the family of a dictator after the fall of the regime is still a sore point in Spain, where Gen Franco's heirs enjoy privileges and wealth despite the nation's transition to democracy on his death in 1975.
I am sure it will be a problem for those countries in the Middle East when and if they manage to topple the regimes that have plagued them for years. There is an all too familiar commonality about all these countries : whilst the people are impoverished they are ruled by and ultra rich dictator and their fat cat families. It was the same in Spain.
In the case of Gen Franco, the family assets are estimated at somewhere between £244 million and £406 million but there are no official records. They still own a 2,000-square-metre palace outside Madrid, the 18th-century palace of Cornilde in Corunna and the Plazo de Meiras, a vast country palace in Galicia.
After the death of Franco, the transitional government judged it better to encourage forgiveness than to stir antagonism that could engulf the fledgling democracy. As a result a tacit "pact of silence" was introduced to avoid recriminations over want went on before.
It was only in 2007 in an initiative led by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the Socialist prime minister and grandson of a republican executed by Franco's soldiers, that the state cut funding for the Franco Foundation run by Carmen Franco Polo, 83 year-old daughter of the dictator.
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