The Valley of the Fallen. Unsettled Heritage in Europe. Final Case Study

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THE VALLEY OF THE FALLEN

UNSETTLED HERITAGE IN EUROPE:FINAL CASE STUDY

AND REA WATKINS PREZ

STUDENT NUMBER: 201501333

AARHUS UNI VER SI TY

DECEMBER 2015


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The Valley of the FallenUnsettled Heritage in Europe: Final case study

Andrea Watkins Prez, December 2015

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THE VALLEY OF THE FALLENUNSETTLED HERITAGE IN EUROPE:FINAL CASE STUDY

CONTENTSIntroduction .................................................................................................................. 2

Political confrontations ................................................................................................ 2

A pact of silence....................................................................................................... 3

Breaking the pact ......................................................................................................... 4

The Valley of the Fallen .............................................................................................. 6

Controversies ............................................................................................................... 8

Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 10

References .................................................................................................................. 11


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INTRODUCTION

This essay goes briefly through the history of the Valley, explaining the different

controversies that surround the memorial. The decision comes mainly from my own will

to learn more about this particular topic. From my point of view, the story of the Valley

that people normally know is vague and diffused, and has, therefore, led to a general

ignorance. This happens because the idea people have on the Civil War and Francoism is

distant and mitigated from what really happened.

The Valley of the Fallen is the most significant memorial erected during Francoism

and has been subject to many discussions ever since Francos dictatorship ended in 1975.

It started as a site to remember the honour of those who fell in the Civil War, but it has

now become a reminder of the atrocities committed during the War and Francoism. This

past 20thof November was Francos 40thdeath anniversary and the question on what to

do with the site is still unresolved and causes confrontations between the different

political views.

POLITICAL CONFRONTATIONS

Spain suffered a civil war from 1936 until 1939. It was fought between the

Republicans, who were loyal to the democratic and left-winged Second Republic, and the

Nationalists, who were mainly falangists led by Franco. The War started after the National

side organised the Alzamiento Nacional (an uprising against the II Republic) between

the 17thand 18thof July 1936. With the victory of the nationalist side came the end of the

Spanish Civil War, that marks the beginning of Francos dictatorship, a period also known

as Francoism. It lasted until his death in 1975 and is characterised by totalitarianism,

an autocratic government and a unitary and centralised State.

It is important to know the different political positions created after the War, and the

opinions they have on the conflict. These have led to a very complex and emotional debate

that is still going on nowadays.

On the right wing, there is a section which represents a very extreme position, which

the most extremists in Partido Popular agree with. They believe that the dictatorship was

not very hard and that it was patronizing, necessary and it came after a civil war which

was fair and needed in order to finish with anarchism and the chaos which ruled duringthe II Republic. According to them, this Republic was just a tentacle of Stalins Russia.


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Going towards the centre, the more liberal and moderate section of the Partido Popular

and PSOE can be found. They believe that the Civil War was a conflict between two sides

equally extremist and that there were as many atrocities in both sides. They think that the

Transition marks the reconciliation between the two confronted Spains, with all their

differences overcome and forgotten, and that the Monarchy and the Constitution of 1978

are the symbol of this reconciliation.

Continuing towards the left, the more left winged section of the PSOE, Izquierda

Unida and similar political parties have a different view towards the events. They believe

that the II Republic was the result of a democratizing process and of the battle against

despotism and absolutism in Spain. It was a legit and democratic regime, voted by the

people and where political pluralism existed (the right wing ruled for 3 years). Of course,as a new regime and with the crisis of 29 punishing Europe, it had some weak spots and

made some mistakes. For them, the Civil War was not a confrontation between two

perverse sides, but the defence of a democratic system against a coup dtat backed by an

economical and military elite, promoted by the Catholic Church and supported by foreign

military forces.

APACT OF SILENCE

When Franco died in 1975, a process known as transition began. Francos regime

did not collapse: in his will, Franco stated that Juan Carlos would be the next head of

State, hoping that he would continue ruling with an authoritarian regime. Instead of this,

Juan Carlos betrayed Franco and led Spain into a constitutional monarchy. He did not

dismantle the regime and start fresh, but instead he reformed the system from the inside

out, negotiating with the Francoist officials who were in power, as well as with

Communist and Socialist leaders who wanted to start taking action.The transition followed the politics of forgetting, whichis what gave shape, in 1977,

to an Amnesty law. It gave amnesty to all acts with political intentions, no matter what

the results were, categorised as crimes or offenses committed before the 15thof December

of 1976. This meant that there would be no official condemnation of Francos

illegitimate coup dtat in 1936 or judicial accountability for the estimated 580,000

people killed during the Spanish Civil War. After 1977 all the problems regarding the

Civil War and the dictatorship were put away and ignored, creating what is known as


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pact of silence. Some think that this was necessary to have a peaceful turn towards

democracy and that is was not just the government who needed it, but also the society:

The pact of silence was needed not only because of the Francoist elites,

but also because of the wide complicity of ordinary Spaniards in the

repressionnot only the civilian militia, or local priests across Spain, but

hundreds of thousands of people who for political reasons and many other

sorts of reasons, had responded to the regimes enthusiastic encouragement

to denounce their neighbours, acquaintances and often even family member

denunciations for which no corroboration was either sought or required. So

it was widespread social fear that underlay the pact of silence: the fears of

those who were complicit, the fear and guilt of families and heirs of thosewho denounced and murdered, as well as of those who were denounced and

murdered. Fear, in short, of the consequences of reopening old wounds that

the social and cultural policies of Francoism had, decade on decade, expressly

and explicitly prevented from healing. (Graham 2004)

This lead to a major ignorance among those who were born after the Civil War and

lived the Transition era. As a consequence, future generations have seen it as something

that, it seems, never happened, causing a generational memory gap.

BREAKING THE PACT

The silence was broken when in 1996 Spain started to plan the arrest of Augusto

Pinochet, a Chilean dictator blamed for the disappearance of seven Spaniards during his

regime. Baltasar Garzn, a judge known for his liberal ideology, was at the lead of the

process.

This made Spanish society think about their own memory, as they had had a dictator

who was responsible for many disappearances, too; they were reminded of their own

unsolved business. This led to a social movement that demanded that some action was

taken on Francoism. Many different organizations were founded, like Association for the

Recovery of the Historical Memory (ARHM) or Memory Forum or the Association of

War Children. They made a lot of progress in the international scene: they managed to

get the UN to include Spain in the list of countries with unresolved issues of state crimes

and repression. As a result, the UN urged the Spanish government to pay the exhumation


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of the bodies, to give them a proper burial and to investigate the surroundings of these

crimes. However, the ARHM did not wait for the governments financing and managed

to exhume 13 bodies in October of 2000 with the help of private funding. By 2006 they

had exhumed up to 40 gravesites and 520 bodies in total. Most of the bodies that were

found had marks of torture and were not, surprisingly, of Republican soldiers but of

ordinary people who probably helped the Republicans who were running away from the

regime.

Motivated by this social situation, the Socialist party started to promote a declaration

that considered Francos uprising in 1936 an antidemocraticact, and Izquierda Unida

sponsored a resolution in which the tragedy of Francos slaves (prisoners who were forced

to build sites like the Valley of the Fallen or other works like damns, railway lines orfactories) was recognized. The president at that time, Jose Mara Aznar, did not seem to

show much interest or support to this matter. He had already designated money to exhume

and bring back bodies of the Blue Division (the troop Franco sent to Russia in order to

help Hitler). Given these circumstances, some regional governments began to take

measures themselves: in 2002 Asturias, Catalua, Extremadura, Pas Vasco, Navarra and

Andaluca funded the exhumation, investigation and reburial of mass graves, and in

Madrid the statue of Franco in Nuevos Ministerios (a central area of the capital) was

removed without legal permission in 2005 after years of debating about the ownership of

this statue between the regional government and the central government.

When Jose Luis Rodrguez Zapatero came into power in 2004, the issue on historical

memory had a major priority. The Law of Historical Memory was approved by the

Congress of Deputies on the 31stof October of 2007. As stated in Article 1, the aim of the

law is to:

Recognise and expand the rights of those victimised by the prosecutionor violence of the Civil War and the Dictatorship, for political or ideological

reasons; to promote the recuperation of personal and family memory; and to

adopt measures destined to supress elements of division among the citizenry

with the goal of promoting cohesion and solidarity across the different

generations of Spaniards around constitutional principles, values, and

liberties. (Ley De La Memoria Histrica (Ley 52/2007 De 26 De Diciembre)

2007)


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The result was not what it was expected, as it ended up causing confrontation between

the right and left wings, bringing back some kind of civil war. As long as PSOE was in

power, the measures planned in the legislation were pursued; however, when the Partido

Popular won the anticipated elections in 2012, all processes were frozen and have

remained untouched.

THE VALLEY OF THE FALLEN

The cult to the fallen became one of the pillars of Francoism, with the belief that the

honour to the dead will have an effect on those who were still alive, guiding them to a

more military, religious and patriotic way of living. This lead to the construction of many

different memorials throughout the country: from street names, to commemorativeplaques, statues monuments or sites.

The Valley of the Fallen was, and still is, a milestone to the dictatorship. For decades

it transmitted exactly what Francoism wanted to transmit: power, death and politics. It

had a double function: to be a shrine for all those who fell during the war, and to be the

physical representation of military victory. It was not just another memorial monumental

site: it was the most emblematic memorial site of the XX century in Spain.

In the summer of 1939, Franco exposed the idea of building a site where all the values

were put together, and in April 1940 a decree was approved in which it was stated that a

magnificent temple for our dead, in which it will be forever prayed for those who fell in

the path of God and the homeland. He declared that he wanted a perdurable memorial

site that materialised the political-religious views associated to a crusade and worked as

an emblem for the victory, as a statement which excluded those who were defeated.

Consequently, the Valley of the Fallenwas erected between 1940 and 1958, under the

supervision of Pedro Mugurza from 1940 until 1950 and Diego Mndez from 1950 until

1958. The construction was carried out by a few skilled workers and a large number of

political prisoners. The final result is a Catholic Basilica and a monumental memorial site

in the Sierra de Guadarrama. This location is not a coincidence: The Sierra de Guadarrama

is close to Madrid, which, apart from being the capital of Spain, is located in the middle

of the Peninsula, stating a centralised political system. It is also located close to the

Monastery of El Escorial, an important architectural representation of the Counter-

Reformation, supported by past Spanish monarchies. Its inauguration took part in April1959, coinciding with the 20thanniversary of the end of the Civil War.


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Image 1: Aeri al view of the Valley of the Fal len.

According to a decree from 1957, the administration and ownership of the Valley

belongs to the Foundation of the Saint Cross of the Valley of the Fallen. Their mission

was to pray to God for the souls of those who died in the Nation Crusade, to beg for the

blessings for Spain from the Highest and to work on the knowledge and establishment of

peace between men based on the Christian social justice. These duties were delegated to

the Benedictine Abbey of the Saint Cross with a decree in 1958 right after it was

considered an abbey by the Pope Pius XII. The order had to maintain worship, to promote

a schoolboy choir, to run a centre for social studies and to take care of the guest quarters.

In 1960 the church was considered a Minor Basilica by the Pope John XXIII. After a law

in 1982 and a decree in 1987 were passed all the sponsorship and representation duties

belong to the National Heritages Administration Committee.

In 1958 it was announced that burial was to be given to those who sacrificed

themselves for God and for Spain and to those who fell in our Crusade, without political

distinction, just the Christian spirit of forgiveness which inspired this creation [the Valley

of the Fallen] commands, as long as they were of Spanish nationality and Catholic

religion. However, in reality, the majority of the bodies are of Nationalists: the presence

of Republicans would break the whole meaning and unity of the memorial. From 1959

until 1983 the remains of 33.847 people were taken from common graves and cemeteries

from all Spanish provinces (except for Ourense, La Corua, Las Palmas and Santa Cruz

de Tenerife) to the dedicated burial grounds located next to the basilica;of these, 21.423


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are identified bodies and 12.410 are unidentified. The remains of Jos Antonio Primo de

Rivera were also transferred here in 1959, and lie at the altar together with those of

Francisco Franco, buried after he died of natural causes in 1975.

CONTROVERSIES

Whatto do with the Valle of the Fallen? is a question that has been dealt with for

years, and it seems that the answer has not been agreed on yet. Just as there are different

opinions on the War and Francoism, there are different opinions towards the Valley of

the Fallen. These can be categorised in four different types of anachronisms1: (1) a

nostalgic anachronism, referred to those who agree with the francoist ideals and politics;

(2) an indifferent anachronism, referred to those who do not show any interest on the site;(3) and uncomfortable anachronism, referred to those who do not want or cannot relate

with the original meaning of the site; and (4) an offensive anachronism, referred to those

who considered the site as a defence to Francoism and an offense to the defeated.

Before the drafting of the Law of Historical Memory several options for the Valley of

the Fallen were debated. From the left-wingspoint of view, several associations and

political parties suggested to transform the Valley into an antifascist and democratic

memorial, into a place of critical interpretation of Francoism and victims amends; some

asked for a demystification of the monument and the exhumation and transfer of the

remains of Francisco Franco and Jos Antonio Primo de Rivera to their respective

mausoleums; others tried to follow the example of other countries, like Germany with

Mauthausen, and studied ways to dismantle the place through a didactic musealization. It

was also suggested that the name was changed to Centre for the Memorial for Liberty,

and that an Institute for Democratic Memory and a Museum of the Repression were

created. From the right-wings point of view, most of them agree on the decision that siteis to be left the way it is, arguing that it is already a monument to reconciliation; and

others think that it should simply be seen as a place of prayer, half basilica, half

cemetery.

When the Law was finally approved, the Valley of the Fallen is mentioned in two of

its articles, but then it does not specify what it should be done with the monument:

1Ferrndiz, Francisco. 2011. 'Guerras Sin Fin: Gua Para Descifrar El Valle De Los Cados En LaEspaa Contempornea'.Poltica Y Sociedad48 (3): 481-500. doi:10.5209/rev_poso.2011.v48.n3.36425.


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Article 16. Valley of the Fallen.

1. The Valley of the Fallen will be strictly regulated by the rules

generally applied to places of worship and public cemeteries.

2. Nowhere in the complex will it be allowed to carry out acts of

political nature or enhancers of the Civil War, its protagonists or

Francoism.

Sixth additional regulation.

The managing foundation of the Valley of the Fallen includes among its

objectives to honour and rehabilitate the memory of all those who died as a

result of the Civil War of 1936-1939 and the political repression that followed

in order to deepen in the knowledge of this historical period and in theconstitutional values. It will promote the aspirations of reconciliation and

coexistence in our society. All with full restraint to the regulations of Article

16. (Ley De La Memoria Histrica (Ley 52/2007, de 26 de diciembre) 2007)

The controversies surrounding the exhumations of the bodies were still unresolved,

and associations and some political parties continued pressuring the government to do

something about it. In 2009 the Constitutional Commission of the Congress passed a

motion that urged the government to provide those who were affected with as muchinformation as possible on the people buried in the Valley, specifying if possible the

identities and place of origin. This duty belonged to the Office for the Victims of the Civil

War and the Dictatorship, which depends on the Ministry of Justice. A final motion was

passed, and it deleted the original agreement of creating a census of the exhumed remains

from the Valley and simply considered the exhumations a priority in relation to all the

other duties related to the recuperation of historical memory.

Moreover, the Law of Historical Memory considers the Valley as any other cemetery,which means that the responsibility of creating a census and authorizing the exhumations

actually belongs to the Community of Madrid or the council of San Lorenzo del Escorial.

But there is an added problem: the census and exhumation would only be carried out with

the identified bodies (with a majority of Nationalists), as the unidentified (with a majority

of Republicans) are protected under the Data Protection Law.

Considering this situation, an Expert Committee on the Valley of the Fallen was

created in May 2011, during the last months of Zapateros government. The purpose of


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this committee was to write a report in which they, firstly, considered the site and,

secondly, recommended some possible measures that were to be taken at the memorial.

From the dozens of recommendations, several can be highlighted: (1) to stop the

damage the building is suffering; (2) the suggestion to transfer the remains of Franco andPrimo de Rivera to their family mausoleums, although the decision belongs to the

ecclesiastic authorities because they are buried inside the basilica, a place of prayer; (3)

the construction of a memorial that treats both sides equally, talking about all the

identified victims; (4) the creation of a centre for interpretation, in order to explain the

origin and circumstances in which the site was built; (5) the impossibility to individually

identify and transfer the bodies out of the Valley.

In November 2011, the final report was given in, when Zapatero had already called forgeneral elections and the Partido Popular was in power. Ever since the right-winged party

started their term, the historical memory has been left aside and they have not taken any

action.

CONCLUSION

The Valley of the Fallen is the main proof that historical memory is still an issue in

Spain. Other European countries which had fascist regimes at similar times, like Germany

or Italy, do not have anything similar for their dictators. Far from taking action, all the

progress on Historical Memory has been left on stand by for the last four years, and it

does not seem like they are going to be reopened any time soon.

Even though it is difficult to make a decision, it is necessary to make one, otherwise

the situation will get even worse: those who dislike the Valley will end up disliking it

even more; the rumours about the place will get bigger; and it will deteriorate so much

that all the valuable information contained in the archives and graves will be lost. Despite

the political views one might have, everyone sees the place as a unique place, and this is

something that should be seen as an advantage when a decision is taken. Personally, I

believe that the recommendations of the Committee are sensible and try to satisfy

everyone, but, specially, they try to update the meaning of the place, making it again into

a place where people can have a common and shared memory. Until a final decision is

taken, Francos wish of leaving an impression in Spanish society will be fulfilled.


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The Valley of the Fallen. Unsettled Heritage in Europe. Final Case Study

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