Spain’s socialist government is racing against the clock to exhume General Franco’s remains before snap election set for April 28.

The body of Francisco Franco, the dictator who ruled Spain for almost four decades, has laid at rest since his death in 1975 in a basilica under the world’s largest Christian cross he had built on a Madrid mountainside.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez vowed to remove the dictator's remains from the opulent Valley of the Fallen mausoleum after forcing his conservative predecessor from office last year.

The socialists, with help from a delicate coalition built with Catalan nationalists, passed a law demanding a reburial in more austere settings. But a legal challenge by the dictator’s grandchildren and opposition from the Benedictine prior in charge of the mausoleum have raised questions about whether the body will be exhumed in time.

Polling suggests that the most likely majority that can be formed from Spain’s fragmented political panorama is a Right-of-centre bloc including the far-Right Vox, which is deeply opposed to any assault on the dictatorship’s legacy.