After winning the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, Francisco Franco established a fascist dictatorship over Spain and ruled until his death in 1975, according to the BBC. He suffered a series of heart attacks, and passed away on November 20, 1975, at the age of 82, as reported by History. As the country transitioned into a democracy, Franco’s body was embalmed and buried in a mausoleum northwest of Madrid called the Valley of the Fallen. The Guardian reports that the Valley of the Fallen mostly houses casualties from both sides of the Spanish Civil War. With Franco buried there, however, the mausoleum became “a shrine for Spain’s far right to pay homage to the dictator” and a hated location for others who saw it as glorifying Franco and his rule.

In 2019, the Spanish government approved efforts to exhume Franco’s body and move it to a new location, despite resistance from Franco’s family and right-wing political parties. In October of that year, the Spanish dictator was reburied at El Pardo-Mingorrubio cemetery, “a family crypt near El Pardo, the palace outside Madrid that had served as his official residence throughout his reign,” according to Britannica. 

After ruling Romania for a quarter of a century, Nicolae Ceausescu was ousted in a violent anti-communist revolt in 1989, as reported by NBC News. Betrayed by his pilot as he tried to flee by helicopter, the dictator and his wife, Elena, were executed by firing squad on Christmas Day at a military base outside of Bucharest. The graphic ordeal was recorded on video, with disturbing footage of the couple weeping and begging for mercy even airing on French television, according to the Associated Press.

The former dictator and his wife were buried about 65 feet apart in the Ghencea military cemetery, but there have been doubts over the years regarding whether the Ceausescus were truly buried there. According to the BBC, in July 2010, after years of demands from the couple’s children, the bodies of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu were exhumed and DNA tests conducted to confirm their identities. In November 2010, it was confirmed that the remains were indeed Nicolae Ceausescu, though there wasn’t enough material to confirm Elena’s identity. Ultimately, the Ceausescus’ remaining child, Valentin, then in his 60s, was satisfied with the results. Today, the Ceausescus are reburied in the same cemetery right next to each other.

After leading a military coup, Augusto Pinochet ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990. His reign was marked by human rights abuses, and thousands of people were tortured and executed, as reported by the BBC. While Pinochet was forced to step down from presidency in 1990, the military general remained as commander-in-chief of the army until 1998, the same year that he was arrested in London at the urging of Spain, according to History. By then, the former dictator was 83, and his old age and ill health would often be cited as reasons for him to not stand trial for human rights, fraud, and corruption charges, as reported by NBC News.

After years of back and forth in the courts, it was finally determined that Pinochet would stand trial for his human rights abuses, but before any legal proceedings could really begin, the Chilean ex-dictator died. He passed away on December 10, 2006, at the age of 91 and a week after suffering a heart attack. Denied a state funeral but granted a military one, Pinochet’s body was cremated and his ashes given to his family to be buried in Santiago, according to SBS News.

Captured and executed by National Transitional Council (NTC) fighters, Muammar Gaddafi died of gunshot wounds in an ambulance on its way to a Misrata hospital on October 20, 2011, as reported by Al Jazeera. A hated figure by many Libyans, the dictator’s body was gracelessly placed on a dirty mattress inside a meat storage freezer. Hundreds of people visited to confirm his death with their own eyes, as described by ABC News, while leaders debated what to do with Gaddafi’s corpse.

The deposed dictator’s body laid in that freezer for four days of public viewing before the NTC finally readied to move the corpse on October 24. Rejecting requests from Gaddafi’s tribe to bury him in his hometown of Sirte, the NTC opted to bury the body of Muammar Gaddafi at a secret location in the desert, so as to prevent the grave from becoming a shrine for his supporters.

Once revered as a hero and leader of Zimbabwe’s independence movement, “bringing an end to white-minority rule,” Robert Mugabe’s legacy was tainted by his forceful 37-year rule as president, as described by CNN. Despite once claiming that “‘only God’ could ever remove him from office,” the former Zimbabwean president was forcefully removed by members of his own party in 2017, at the age of 93. He spent his final years between Singapore, where he received treatment for cancer (according to the Herald), and his residence in Zimbabe’s capital city, Harare.

On September 6, 2019, Mugabe died in Singapore, at the age of 95. After receiving a state funeral a week later (that has been called “sparsely-attended,” as reported by the BBC), the location of where the former leader would be buried became a point of debate between the government and his family. While the government wanted Mugabe to be buried in Zimbabwe’s National Heroes Acre monument in Harare, it eventually conceded to the family’s wishes to inter Mugabe at his rural home in Kutama. Still, according to CNN, traditional chiefs in the country continue to demand that the ex-dictator be exhumed and reburied at the National Heroes shrine.