Word: franco
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It’s rare for physics to make the news, but somehow the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator run by the CERN laboratory on the Franco-Swiss border, became a bona-fide celebrity. There hasn’t been a tube this famous since the London subway. The collider’s renown is likely because most of the news about it has been bizarre: The Wall Street Journal ran an article about physicists there studying with a comedy coach to help them think creatively. A rap about the collider reached three million views on YouTube. Rumors...
...That claim goes all the way back to 1938, when, with the Spanish Civil War still under way, authorities in the region organized a collection to buy the palace and give it to Spain's new dictator. Ever since, Franco and his descendants have used the sprawling compound, with its three reconstructed towers - Napoleon's troops burned the originals - and six hectares of gardens, as a vacation home. More than three decades after her father's death, Carmen, Franco's sole child, continues to summer there every year...
...country where nary a statue of the dictator is left standing, and plans are in motion to turn the Valley of the Fallen, Franco's oversized and overwrought mausoleum, into a history museum, it comes as little surprise that some Spaniards take issue with his descendants' continuing claim to a lavish "gift" whose origins, critics say, are suspect. "The dictatorship's propaganda lied for 40 years, saying that the pazo was paid for by popular subscription as a gift for Franco," said Manuel Monge, spokesman of the La Coruãa-based Commission for the Recuperation of Historic Memory, which...
...Although the regional government of Galicia has adopted a more measured stance, it too has decided that the Franco family has to share. The pazo, after all, once belonged to Emilia Pardo Bazán, a noted writer. That heritage, coupled with the compound's distinct architecture, has convinced officials that the property should be protected as part of the region's cultural patrimony. Last summer, the government sent a team of technicians to the palace to inspect its condition and its contents. When the family refused them entry, the government sued for access. In March, the regional supreme court...
...government moved to have the pazo officially declared a "property of cultural interest," a category that carries protective status. Carmen, Leticia and the rest of Franco's descendants have a month to file an appeal, but the government is confident that it will prevail by the end of the year. "As much for its uniqueness as for its cultural and symbolic significance, the pazo has all the characteristics necessary to obtain the maximum degree of protection," said the councilwoman in charge of cultural heritage, Anxela Bugallo. Once the compound is awarded protected status, the Francos will have to request government...