Eldest grandson of late Spanish dictator charged for ramming a patrol car after high-speed chase resulting from routine stop

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The eldest grandson of late Spanish dictator Francisco Franco was sentenced to 30 months in jail on Thursday for deliberately ramming a police car following a high-speed chase.

A court in Teruel in eastern Spain sentenced Francisco Franco Martínez-Bordiú, 63, to 18 months jail for aggravated assault and 12 more months for dangerous driving, a court spokeswoman told AFP.

He will also have to pay €1,500 ($1,800) to one agent who was injured and €2,720 to the Guardia Civil police force for their damaged vehicle.

According to a complaint lodged by a police officer involved in the car chase, Guardia Civil officers on 30 April 2012 spotted Martínez-Bordiú driving near Calamocha in the province of Teruel in the dark without any lights.

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When they signalled for him to stop, he instead picked up speed and jumped several stop signs before ramming a patrol car, running it off the road.

Martínez-Bordiú, one of seven children by Franco’s only daughter María del Carmen Franco Polo, who died in December, denied being in the vehicle that rammed the patrol car when he appeared in court in 2014.

His lawyer told reporters that on that day Martínez-Bordiú had loaned his car to a former Romanian employee who “probably” no longer lived in Spain.

It was the latest in a series of brushes with the law experienced by the heirs of Franco, who ruled Spain with an iron fist from 1939 until his death in 1975.

Martínez-Bordiú, who published a book about his grandfather, was charged in 2009 with assaulting a railway employee at a station in Zaragoza in northern Spain after he missed his train.

He was acquitted after the employee who accused him of striking her failed to show up at his trial.

His younger brother Jaime Martínez-Bordiú was given a one-year suspended sentence in 2009 for beating his then girlfriend at a hotel on the Costa del Sol.