Tucked away in the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains northwest of Madrid lies a monumental reminder of Europe’s authoritarian past: el Valle de los Caídos, or the Valley of the Fallen. The site consists of a Benedictine monastery at the crest of a mountain and a subterranean Catholic basilica, larger than St. Peter’s in Rome, carved into the peak. An enormous stone cross, the tallest in the world, crowns the complex. It can be seen from over 20 miles away. A granite esplanade extending from the foyer of the church offers spectacular views of the mountains and the outskirts of the capital in the distance. The scale of the monument is practically indescribable, dwarfing visitors, but the most arresting feature of this colossal memorial has little to do with its architecture. The Valle de los Caídos is a public and prominent mausoleum for a dictator.
In its current form, the site amounts to a shrine venerating Francisco Franco, the right-wing autocrat who ruled the country from 1939 until his death in 1975. Franco’s regime built the monument to commemorate the victory of his Nationalist forces over left-leaning Republicans in the 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War. The monument has inspired protests and raucous parliamentary debates, which show no sign of being resolved soon. Defenders of the Valle de los Caídos argue that it honors the dead from both sides of the civil war, but the annual pilgrimage to the site by Franco’s disciples suggests the monument serves a far more sinister purpose. Indisputably, the heated controversy demonstrates that Spain’s young democracy has made little progress in interring the ghosts of its authoritarian past.
Planning for the monument began before most of the war’s bodies were even cold, and Franco devoted considerable personal time and attention to seeing his vision realized. Despite what present-day defenders claim, the Valle was explicitly conceived as a monument honoring only those who fought on Franco’s side of the conflict; the decree that authorized the project called for a monumental homage to the heroes and martyrs of the crusade. This Catholic symbolism reflects Franco’s narrative of the civil war: a triumph over the alien forces of communism and modernity, rather than a fratricidal conflict which pitted Spaniard against Spaniard.
Because a weak postbellum economy slowed down construction of the monument, Franco used the forced labor of political prisoners to speed up work on the site. Detainees could opt to work on the monument in exchange for a miserly salary and a reduction in their sentences, a policy the regime touted as an example of rehabilitation. The exact number of forced laborers is unknown—sympathizers of the regime generally contend it was fairly low, while the testimony of former prisoners sharply contradicts that view—but it is clear that it was punishing work. Many prisoners perished in the harsh conditions.
Construction of the Valle lasted two decades. The monument was finally dedicated in 1959, on the 20th anniversary of the end of the war. By that time, 20,000 fallen civil war soldiers had been reburied in a massive crypt behind the basilica. These interments continued into the 1980s and the cadavers number 33,833, making the Valle de los Caídos one of the largest mass graves in the world. One of the first graves to be transferred to the site was that of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, a founding father of Spanish fascism who had been executed by Republicans during the first months of the civil war.
The regime’s rhetoric around the site shifted significantly in the 1960s during a period of liberalization, moving away from the glorification of its victory and toward the ideal of national unity. During that time, it became common to hear the Valle discussed as a symbol of peace and unification. New policies allowed the burial of Republican dead at the site as well, signaling a cautious step towards reconciliation. The attempts to recast the symbolism of the monument, however, set off a new wave of criticism. Very few families of fallen Republican soldiers wanted them buried in the crypt, but the government still relocated gravesites to the Valle. These capricious exhumations and reinterments affected families from both sides of the war, but mostly Republicans, adding a new dimension to the site’s troubled history. Families have been fighting ever since to reclaim the remains of their loved ones, enlisting the support of many leftist politicians. But so far their efforts have been largely fruitless, with little hope on the horizon. Just one court ruling has ordered the removal of a body from the Valle, a decision that has been appealed and is now under review by the Tribunal Supremo, Spain’s highest court.
Adding insult to injury, Franco’s body was interred at the Valle upon his death in 1975—even against his family’s and his own wishes. Critics rightfully pointed out that even if one viewed the site as commemorating all the war dead, the dictator himself was decidedly not one of them. Yet the transition to democracy in the 1970s delayed any public reckoning with the confused legacy of the Valle de los Caídos. While the country’s democratic transition was heralded as an example for other nations, the negotiated rupture, as it was called, buried many of the outstanding issues of Francoism. Unlike its neighbor Portugal, Spain did not experience a cathartic break with authoritarianism, but instead stuck by a collective agreement to leave behind the wounds of the past, known as the pacto de olvido. As a result, many figures of the dictatorship reinvented themselves as leaders of the fledgling democracy. Supporters of the fallen dictator continued rallying at the Valle de los Caídos, and the monument remained unaltered from its original state. Managed by Patrimonio Nacional, the same cultural organ that administers the country’s many royal palaces, the site continued to attract tourists in staggering numbers, even as it stood—in the minds of many—as a constant reminder of the over 400,000 people exterminated for their political views.
The tide of historical memory began to turn in 2004, when the center-left Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) returned to power under prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. In an attempt to deal with the unresolved legacies of the Francoist dictatorship, Zapatero’s government passed the Ley de Memoría Histórica in 2007. Among other things, the law removed symbols of the Franco regime from public spaces and prohibited political demonstrations at the Valle de los Caídos. In 2010, the government ordered the monument closed to visitors, ostensibly due to restoration work, and in 2011 it formed an expert commission to determine the future of the site. Before Zapatero could act on the commission’s recommendations, however, the PSOE was defeated in that year’s parliamentary elections by Mariano Rajoy’s center-right Partido Popular (PP). Rajoy has refused to take any further action, and all proposals have since been paralyzed.
The PP is decidedly not fascist in its outlook, but many of its earliest members were holdovers from Franco’s authoritarian regime. Rajoy has not altered or undone his predecessor’s efforts to deal with the Francoist legacy, yet he has also done little to support that project. Today, the Valle de los Caídos remains fundamentally unchanged. In fact, one of Rajoy’s first actions as Prime Minister was to reopen the monument to visitors. Meanwhile, the PSOE’s repeated attempts to force the issue in parliament have all failed. A PSOE resolution calling for the removal of Franco’s remains passed 198-1 (with many delegates abstaining, including those of the PP), but it did not have the force of law. Rajoy has ruled out any modifications to the Valle without a wide political consensus, and his government has no plans to act on the resolution.
Yet the status quo cannot remain. Without critical reflection, the legacy of Francoism threatens to unravel the unity of the nation: A secessionist movement in Catalonia has fed partly on Catalan resentment against the lasting impact of Franco, who ruthlessly suppressed the country’s regional identities. Spain needs to engage with its troubled past, and the Valle de los Caídos is a good symbolic place to begin. The bodies of both Franco and Primo de Rivera should be removed, since their presence has converted the basilica into a place of pilgrimage for contemporary supporters of the extreme right. Likewise, families should be allowed to reclaim the remains of their relatives, a move that would resolve a longstanding grievance. Finally, the monument should be recast as a shrine to the suffering on both sides of the conflict and converted into a museum that contextualizes the traumatic history of the Spanish Civil War. Such a transformation of the Valle will not come easily, but a reckoning is long overdue. Otherwise, the ghosts of Francoism threaten to overturn a hard-earned peace.
