The Guardian tells us Spain has not faced and struggled with its fascist past the way other countries have – that Franco distorted that history for 40 years and then Spain just carried on in the same direction.

Even some of Vázquez’s friends are unsympathetic to his quest for documents. “I’ve got friends in Madrid who say, ‘What’s the point? Just leave it’,” he says, but he has no intention of doing that, believing that Spain has a long way to go before its accounts with the civil war are settled.

He reserves particular ire for the memorial of the Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen). It was claimed by Franco that this grandiose basilica, crypt and