For almost four decades General Francisco Franco was someone Spaniards could not escape. He was there in school books, church prayers, statues, plaques, street names and thousands of other reminders of a violent insurrection that led to a vicious civil war.

Now his face and name are being erased from public view. Even the army, where nostalgia for the dictator survived long after his death in 1975, has pledged to remove all plaques, statues and monuments to the regime of a man it once revered as the saviour of the nation. A full list of the Francoist paraphernalia still lurking inside the country's barracks will be ready by the end of the year. Then the cull will start.

"There are more than 300 of them," admitted Constantino Méndez, the defence secretary.