An artist in Madrid, Spain is taking the country’s tragic legacy of the reign of right-wing dictator Francisco Franco and placing it at the people’s hands.. Or more precisely, at their fists.  He’s stirring up controversy for making an incredibly real image of Franco’s face and putting it on a punching bag.

“It seemed to me that it would be good for those who were persecuted and received no justice, to have this to beat up, like a kind of catharsis,” said artist Eugenio Merino.  “You can do that, get your anger out, because you won’t be able to get much else in Spain.”

Merino’s hyperrealist sculpture of Franco’s head is made from silicone, outfitted with human hair, and mounted on a springy stand like something a boxer would punch for practice. 

And punch it they do.  Merino, who was born after Franco’s murderous reign, has had to repair it a few times since unveiling it in July as part of an anti-fascist art exhibit, because people really expressed their contempt for Franco.

Spain still hasn’t fully dealt with the atrocities that occurred under Franco.  More than 200,000 men and women were executed, another 200,000 died in detention, and 114,266 people simply disappeared – killed by the fascist Falange party or by the military, bodies abandoned without documentation or notifying the next of kin.  Franco died in 1975.

And even with that bloody history, Franco still has his defenders.  The Fundacion Nacional Francisco Franco has lodged a complaint over “Punching Franco”, like it did with an earlier work of Merino’s, depicting Franco preserved in a soft drink refrigerator. In that case, a judge ruled that “Always Franco” did not “alter the reputation or the memory of the historical person, but constitutes a critical work that calls for reflection.”