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Manuel Murillo Sanchez was sentenced to two-and-a-half years for
attempted murder and five years for possession of war weapons, a
court document released on Tuesday said. He was also prohibited
from owning firearms for the next eight years.
He can appeal the sentence. His lawyer did not immediately
return calls seeking comment.
In August 2018, Murillo offered to "hunt down" Sanchez "like a
deer and put his head on a chimney" after the Spanish government
ordered former dictator Francisco Franco's body exhumed from a
state mausoleum outside Madrid.
Even though Franco's rule ended with his death in 1975, Spanish
public opinion is still divided over the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil
War, which tore apart families and communities, and the legacy
of the ensuing dictatorship.
Over the past 20 years, the attempts of left-wing governments to
eliminate the dictatorship's remnants have prompted the ire of
far-right fringe groups nostalgic for the era.
On the chats, Murillo also asked for help to organise an attack
and bragged about the guns he owned and his ability as a
sharpshooter. "I'm a sniper and with an accurate shot Sanchez is
over," he said.
The judges dismissed Murillo's defence that he was drunk when
making those comments. He has already spent two years in
preventive custody between September 2018 and September 2020,
when he was released ahead of the ruling.
(Reporting by Christina Thykjaer; Editing by Inti Landauro and
Alex Richardson)
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