Una Grande Libre reads the sign above the entrance to a bar-restaurant in Madrid’s Usera neighbourhood. This was Francisco Franco’s motto for Spain – one, great, free – and it is accompanied by a large portrait of the dictator superimposed on to the window.

The exteriors of El Cangrejo in Ciudad Real and Casa Pepe in Despeñaperros are a little bit more subtle, but not much: decorated ostentatiously in the red and yellow of the Spanish flag. The accompanying historical symbols on display, such as the yoke and arrows of the Falange and the Eagle of San Juan, remove any doubt: the year is 2026 and you have encountered one of Spain’s network of bars and restaurants that proudly glorify Franco and his dictatorship.

These unsettling and unusual places tell a vivid story about the unique way that Spain deals with its past – or fails to. They seem all the more confusing in the context of Pedro Sánchez’s recent historical memory legislation, and beg the question: how do these places still exist?

Portraits of the dictator are non-negotiable in these restaurants: you’ll find them on the tables in Ávila’s El Rincón Nacional, for example, alongside the 1kg steaks they serve. Una Grande Libre has a stone bust of Franco on display, alongside numerous pictures of him on the walls, while Restaurante El Cangrejo has the most unique version I’ve come across, where they’ve Photoshopped El Caudillo into a Real Madrid shirt. After a meal of rustic Spanish fare, order a coffee and you’ll find the packets of sugar pay tribute to the 1981 attempted military coup. You may well hear the Francoist anthem Cara Al Sol being played on the speakers. The owner, José Antonio Delgado, is known to play it several times a day – and he answers the phone with “Arriba, España” – “Arise, Spain” – another Francoist motto.

Casa Pepe even has a shop attached, where, in addition to a variety of cheeses and cured meats, you can buy all kinds of memorabilia for the dictatorship-nostalgist in your life: tote bags bearing Franco’s face, or tins of pimentón de la Vera (Spanish smoked paprika) in the design of the Francoist flag.

Most of these establishments are roadside bars situated on the motorway, which was (along with the year of Franco’s coup, 1936) the inspiration for Ruta 36, a US-style highway pilgrimage. Some of these establishments will even serve your meal on the house if you arrive with a stamp from each bar on the route.

Una Grande Libre stands out from the others. Partly because it’s near the centre of Madrid, rather than in the middle of nowhere, and partly because its owner is Xiangwei Chen, a Chinese immigrant who has not only opened a bar honouring the nationalist dictator of his new home, but even named his son Franco. He’s become a minor public figure in Spain, known as el chino facha (the Chinese fascist), a moniker you can find written on wine bottles in his bar.

These bars offer a window on to what contemporary nostalgia for the dictatorship looks like at street level: but they also highlight the long timelines and repeated setbacks faced by Spain’s historical memory movement – even when the law is on their side.

And the two are connected. Chen appeared on the news in 2019, for example, when Franco’s remains were finally moved to Mingorrubio cemetery, eight years after it was first proposed by the Zapatero government. Franco’s previous resting place, the Valley of the Fallen (as it was then known), marked by the tallest cross in the world, was a memorial that he commissioned in memory of those who died fighting for his “glorious crusade” to take power – and his burial site functioned as a shrine for Spain’s far right.

Chen was also awarded the title of “knight of honour” by the National Francisco Franco Foundation in 2016, an organisation created to honour his legacy after his death in 1975. It is astonishing enough that such an organisation would exist at all, especially when you try to imagine a German equivalent – but even more shocking are the €150k in public grants the foundation received during the José María Aznar years, and the fact donations to it were partially tax deductible. Abolition of the Franco Foundation was one of the key aims of the 2022 Democratic Memory Law – it was finally signed into law last month, three and a half years later.

This isn’t the only part of the legislation that has taken years to bear fruit: the continued existence of the bars of Ruta 36 should theoretically also be in jeopardy. Looking at the letter of the law, you can’t help but wonder how they have been able to continue operating so brazenly. The Democratic Memory Law requires the removal of any symbols that glorify the dictatorship or its protagonists from spaces “with public access”, which would include bars and restaurants.

The reality of its implementation, lawyer Eduardo Ranz tells me, is very different: “Under this law, it’s only the Ministry of Democratic Memory that has the ability to open an inquiry against these places. What I don’t understand is why, in these last four years, they have not done so, despite these establishments breaking this law. Removing these Francoist symbols is one of the government’s most important unresolved issues.”

Despite the many setbacks faced by the historical memory movement – most recently, the overturning of a €10,001 fine levelled at the Falange for its public tributes to its founder, José Antonio Primo de Rivera – there have been some advances in the wake of the 2022 legislation. The Valley of the Fallen, for example, has been renamed, repurposed as a site of “democratic memory” and a museum is planned for the site.

However, as the secretary of state for Democratic Memory, Fernando Martínez López, himself admitted last October on the third anniversary of the law’s passing, there was still “a lot to do”: from its implementation in schools to the further recovery and identification of bodies from mass graves.

Spain’s network of Francoist restaurants and bars is a continual, real-world reminder of this. So until something changes, you will still be able to see a 2-metre tall picture of the Spanish dictator proudly displayed in a restaurant window in the nation’s capital.

• Abbas Asaria is a food writer and chef based in Madrid