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HUMAN
REMAINS
& VIOLENCE
Human Remains and Violence, Volume 3, No. 1 (2017), 3–21 © Manchester University Press 3
http://dx.doi.org/10.7227/HRV.3.1.2
This is an Open Access article published under the conditions of the Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivitives licence
https://creativecommons.org/licences/by-nc-nd/4.0
The valley of the fallen:
a new El Escorial for Spain
Queralt Solé Universitat de Barcelona
queraltsole@ub.edu
Abstract
Since the beginning of the twenty-rst century, Spain has experienced a cycle
of exhumations of the mass graves of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and has
rediscovered that the largest mass grave of the state is the monument that glori-
es the Franco regime: the Valley of the Fallen. Building work in the Sierra de
Guadarrama, near Madrid, was begun in 1940 and was not completed until 1958.
is article analyses for the rst time the regime’s wish, from the start of the
works, for the construction of the Valley of the Fallen to outdo the monument of
El Escorial. At the same time the regime sought to create a new location to sanctify
the dictatorship through the vast transfer to its crypts of the remains of the dead of
the opposing sides of the war.
Key words: Valley of the Fallen, historical memory, Francoism, Spanish Civil War,
human remains, mass graves
Introduction
In 1940 a decree was published ordering the construction of a large monument that
would feature a universally recognised Christian basilica and be set in the Sierra
del Guadarrama, to the north Madrid. e location, called Cuelgamuros, was to
be transformed into an eternal memorial for those who had sacriced their lives
for Spain – all of whom would be from the winning side of the Spanish Civil War
(1936–39). It was to be built within a year. e work in fact took eighteen years
and the monument was not ocially inaugurated until 1959. Since it was to be a
place of commemoration and honour, it was originally conceived and designed to
house the mortal remains of the Francoist soldiers who had fallen at the front or of
civilians and priests murdered in the Republic’s rear. e fact that the construction
of the Valley of the Fallen became so drawn out over time meant that in the end,
and starting in 1958, human remains from both sides of the civil war were brought
from all over Spain – the bones of Francoist soldiers and those of Republican
soldiers – usually without their families being informed of the nal resting place
of their loved ones’ remains. e last interment in the Valley of the Fallen was
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in 1983 – that is, aer democracy had been re-established. Since then, the crypts
housing the remains of thousands of people who died during the war have not
been reopened except on a few rare occasions such as for one-o exhumations or
assessments of the state of preservation of the remains.
is work presents a short account of historical studies centred on the monu-
ment and, based on previously established historical information, briey explains
the history of the Valley of the Fallen and the transfer into its crypts of the remains
of those who died in the civil war. It argues that the wish of the Francoist regime
was to outdo the royal pantheon of San Lorenzo de El Escorial in terms of both
size and signicance. As will be seen, the monument constructed at Paracuellos
has been the subject of historiographical and sociological analysis, but to date it
has not been empirically compared with the monument of El Escorial. For the
purposes of this comparison and to lend support to the theory regarding Franco’s
wish to erect a new monument greater El Escorial and for a new dynasty, the fol-
lowing sources have been used: documentation produced by the Council of Works
of the Monument to the Fallen, which is preserved in the General Archives of
the Administration (in Alcalá de Henares); documentation from the Provincial
Archives of Lérida; and municipal documentation preserved by various local
councils in the province of Tarragona. News and articles published in various
newspapers of the time – in particular La Vanguardia Española, and also La Hoja
del Lunes and Imperio: Diario de Zamora – were also located and analysed. ey
are not without political bias, as these were newspapers from the end of the regime.
But it is precisely this bias that allows us to see the message and ideas that the dicta-
torship was hoping to convey to society in regard to the monument of the Valley of
the Fallen. Although this type of press is a biased primary source, the bias allows us
to analyse Franco’s wish to create in the imagination of the Spanish citizen rst the
construction and then the existence of a great and enduring monument that must
be superior to the royal pantheon of San Lorenzo de El Escorial.
A permanent memorial to the civil war
e Spanish Civil War ocially ended on 1 April 1939. It had begun because of the
failure of the military coup of 18 July 1936 initiated by various army factions that
wanted to overthrow the Republican regime established in 1931. For almost three
years the rebel troops fought the Republic until it was defeated. e war ended, but
peace never came.1 Instead, a harsh dictatorship began that lasted until the death of
Francisco Franco on 20 November 1975, and for almost forty years the Francoist
regime used the memory of the civil war as a means of creating fear, repression
as an instrument of terror and accentuation of the dierence between victors and
vanquished as a key and central instrument. It did so because it divided society into
good and bad. And against the possibility of a better and righteous future it placed
a past and present comprised only of survival and corruption. e backbone of the
Francoist regime, once the terror of the war and the rst few post-war years were
over, was the constant reminder of the fact that some had won the war and others
had been not only beaten but totally defeated.
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Once the war was over the regime used various ways of dierentiating between
the two sides and it tried to ensure that dierence was replicated in every area and
aspect of people’s lives. It is not necessary here to emphasise the matter of repres-
sion, by which denouncing or vouching for people who were considered to be
‘fanatics’ could end or save the lives of men and women. In addition to the physi-
cal repression resulting in death or deprivation of liberty, for many years nding
work depended on one’s own background and that of one’s family. Civil service
posts were occupied by the victors or their close friends and family. Access to state
assistance for those wounded or maimed in the war, as well as for those widowed,
depended on whether or not they were considered loyal to the ‘Movement’. Even
the dead were charged dierently in terms of burials, graves and taxes, based on
whether or not the dead person was a ‘supporter of the Movement’. Attempts were
made to cover every aspect of professional, cultural, daily and leisure life in which
this division could be emphasised and made evident. ere was also a desire to
transform the landscape by covering it with monuments. Articial elements were
continually imposed on the environment by erecting a wide variety of monuments
across the whole of Spain from 1939 onwards to commemorate the dictator and
his victory.2
Spaniards’ everyday landscape was full of new elements that attempted to make
permanent the memory of the war and of Franco’s victory: the Arco de Triunfo
in Madrid; the monument to Onésimo Redondo3 on the Hill of San Cristóbal
(Valladolid) and the monument erected to General Emilio Mola4 near Alcocero
(Burgos); monuments commemorating battles, such as that erected in the ruined
town of Belchite (Zaragoza) or the one in Bot to remember the Battle of the Ebro
(Tarragona); statues of Franco in the big cities; solitary crosses on roadsides and in
various locations to commemorate the dead of Franco’s army in an individual way;
plaques in churches throughout the country in memory of those ‘Fallen for God
and for Spain’, a reference to soldiers who had died at the front or had been killed
in reprisals in the Republican rear (the so-called martyrs); and crypts and monu-
ments in cemeteries that paid homage to the fallen of the war. And what encom-
passed within itself the constant memory of this victory, reiterating the Catholic
Church’s support for the victors and the regime in and perpetuating the memory
of the war through the remains of the dead held within it, leaving no room for any
doubt regarding its ambition to endure, was and is the Valley of the Fallen, in the
valley of Cuelgamuros, some y kilometres from Madrid, on a plot occupying
1,377 hectares of the municipality of San Lorenzo de El Escorial.
A limited historiography
e current historiography focuses little on the Valley of the Fallen. e rst refer-
ence book on the monument at Cuelgamuros was written by a journalist and for
decades was the only book on the Valley of the Fallen. Daniel Sueiro published El
Valle de los Caídos: Los secretos de la cripta franquista (e Valley of the Fallen:
e Secrets of the Francoist Crypt) in 1977 and the work was republished in 1983
and 2006.5 It is a very well-documented study, especially when one considers
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the period when his investigation took place. He had no opportunity to consult
archival sources, as either he was unable to locate them or they had not yet been
made public. Despite this, in terms of its information on the history of the monu-
ment – who built the Valley of the Fallen and how, gures on construction costs,
witness statements, details on escaped prisoners, analysis of the works of sculpture
on show, interviews that were conducted – and its very generally focused research
ndings, it does not dier much from what Olmeda oers in the other book of
research focused on the Valley of the Fallen, which was published in 2009. El Valle
de los Caídos: Una memoria de España (e Valley of the Fallen: A Memory of
Spain)6 was also written by a journalist, and throughout the work he explains how
the idea for the monument developed, as well as who built it and under what cir-
cumstances. He collects various witness statements, analyses the accounts to which
he had access and even approaches the parliamentary discussions on the subject in
the rst decade of the twenty-rst century. When they were published both books
stood in contrast to others of an opposing ideological stance. In 1976 the Francisco
Franco Foundation published an essay7 that was intended to counteract Daniel
Sueiro’s work; and in 2009 a book by Juan Blancowas published that was intended
to counteract that of Olmeda.8
As stated above, on a historiographical level there have been very few historical
studies. Among them, it is worth highlighting those of Queralt Solé,9 who located
the documentation relating to the transfer of remains to the Valley of the Fallen
from all over Spain and focused on the opening of mass graves and the transfer
of the exhumed human remains – especially those from Catalonia – to the crypts
of the Valley of the Fallen from 1958 onwards. Focusing his analysis on the same
issue, José Díaz Arriaza (2011) has published work on the transfer of remains
from Seville’s cemetery. Another study that is worth mentioning is that by Alberto
Bárcena,10 who conducted an in-depth investigation of the documentation held in
the General Archives of the Royal Palace of Madrid (sixty-nine boxes) to analyse
the system of ‘Sentence Reduction through Work’ and the circumstances of the
prisoners who worked on the construction of the monument. His study counter-
balances what he himself calls the ‘black legend’ of the Valley of the Fallen, accord-
ing to which the prisoners were poorly treated, undernourished and suered a very
high death rate. It is a pity that, having uncovered this reality of the construction
work –which appears to demonstrate that the situation of these prisoners was
privileged in comparison to that of others– Bárcena extrapolates his interpreta-
tion more generally and argues that the monument itself and the inauguration of
the Valley of the Fallen signied and achieved a true national reconciliation. e
fact that a ‘black legend’ has grown up over the years around certain aspects of the
monument does not mean that it is not of great political signicance, as is indeed
evident.
Although from a historiographical point of view the Valley of the Fallen has
not become a central focus of analytical study, and although certain aspects of
this subject still remain to be understood,11 much more work has been done on
its memorial aspects. Understandably, the Valley of the Fallen is positioned as an
example – and indeed it is one – of the imposition of a single memory of the past.
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Among such studies it is worth noting the analyses carried out by Josena Cuesta,12
Zira Box13 and, above all, Paloma Aguilar.14 e latter, a political scientist, was one
of the rst to approach the monument from the perspective of its importance as
the disseminator of an unequivocal message through which – despite the belated
attempt of the dictatorship (although not of Franco) to change its signicance and
transform it, on its inauguration, into a monument of reconciliation – ‘the ocial
memory could not be imposed onto the consciousness of the majority, and the
Valley of the Fallen is remembered as an ostentatious and unfortunate pantheon
that Franco made for himself and for the victors of the war’.15 e political scientist
Katherine Hite also analyses the Valley of the Fallen, comparing it to monuments
and memorials in South America.16 She concludes that ‘in this way, inasmuch
as it is an obsessive symbolic legacy, Franco’s Valley of the Fallen represents the
ultimate incarnation of the alliance between the army, the Church and the Right,
together with the primacy of Spain as defender of Western civilisation’.17
e Valley of the Fallen has been analysed by various people as paradigmatic
of a partisan memory of the war and the dictatorship. Among the works written
from this perspective, the contributions by Luis Castro,18 Marlène Albert-Llorca19
and Francisco Ferrándiz20 – the latter two are anthropologists – stand out. In his
analysis, Ferrándiz attaches great current importance to the monument as a subject
that has acquired particular prominence in the debate around how to read and act
today in respect of the memory of the civil war and the dictatorship. Such are the
possibilities for the study, analysis and interpretation of the Valley of the Fallen
that the archaeologist Alfredo González Ruibal has published an analysis of the
remains from the point of view of his specialism.21 In this work, he proposes a dual
strategy for the ideological deconstruction of the Valley of the Fallen, carrying out
archaeological excavations on the site that are focused, above all, on analysing the
conditions in which the prisoners worked, based on remnants which have resisted
the passage of time and on separating and dierentiating the Francoist monument
from the other monuments now managed by National Heritage. is is done in
order to add it to tourist itineraries of the surviving remains of the civil war, such
as trenches, shelters, front lines and so forth, thereby situating it as another vestige
of the combat.
Beyond academic works, in this era of visual culture in which we live we should
mention the various audiovisual productions focused on the Valley of the Fallen
that have been made. In these, direct witnesses and historians are interviewed; the
search for and locating of documentation is portrayed; and historical and current
images are shown. As well as the news of that time, which can be seen on the inter-
net via a channel on NO-DO,22 the ocial news channel of the Francoist regime, in
2006 the documentary La memoria es vaga (Memory is Vague) was produced, while
in 2009 two reports based on the Valley of the Fallen were broadcast on Antena3
Televisión (a private state channel). ese were entitled Franco, Operación Caídos
(Franco, Operation Fallen) and El Valle de los Caídos, la obsesión de Franco (e
Valley of the Fallen, Franco’s Obsession). In 2012, Alessandro Pugno produced the
lm A la sombra de la cruz (In the Shadow of the Cross), which claimed to be a
neutral vision – there is no narrator in the lm – of the daily life of the Benedictine
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community that resides in the Valley of the Fallen and of the education received by
the children who go to school there. Despite no opinion whatsoever being uttered,
it is still shocking to see how both the community and the children who attend the
school live alongside a monument (as well as sculptures, furnishings and a land-
scape) that is so markedly ideological. One could make a very suggestive analysis,
although there is no room to do so here, of the scene in which the children le past
Franco’s tomb to take communion. It is evidence of a daily coexistence with death
and the dead person – a dictator – at moments of religious signicance such as the
taking of communion. In 2013 the last lm of those made to date was broadcast, in
this instance by a regional public television channel (TV3, in Catalonia). It is enti-
tled Te sacaré de aquí, abuelo! (I’ll Get You Out of Here, Grandad!), and it reveals
the condition and location of the human remains in the crypts and the hopes
expressed by various family members that they will be exhumed. As Moreno and
Rueda23 point out, all these lms – except for the one by Pugno – imbue the area
of the Valley of the Fallen with a feeling of violence and arrogation with regard to
those who lost the war and their families.24
Before we end this brief overview of historiographical writings and produc-
tions on the Valley of the Fallen, it is necessary to point out that, due to the debate
that has existed in Spain since the year 2000 regarding Francoist memory and
democratic memory, as well as due to the respective public policies that have been
created or for which there is a demand, there have been more writings on the Valley
of the Fallen by Spanish political or legal institutions, which have been followed by
references in the press because of the interest to which they give rise, than there
have been writings produced by the academic world. Likewise, the whole body of
documentation generated during the democratic era has not yet been subjected
to analysis, except for the above-mentioned anthropological study by Ferrándiz.25
The biggest mass grave in Spain
Just one year aer the end of the war, on 1 April 1940, a decree from the president
of the government was passed. It was published in the ocial state bulletin on 2
April: ‘Decree of 1 April 1940 providing for the erection of a basilica, monastery
and youth centre on the land situated on the slopes of the Sierra de Guadarrama (El
Escorial), known as Cuelgamuros, to preserve the memory of those who fell in our
Glorious Crusade.’26 e preamble of the decree set out very clearly the objective of
the construction and the reason for undertaking a work that would stand the test
of time, be dierent from the lesser monuments that were being erected in towns
and villages and last forever,: ‘e stones erected must be of the size of those of the
monuments of antiquity, defy time and oblivion, and create a place of meditation
and rest where future generations may pay a homage of admiration to those who
bequeathed them a better Spain.’27 e declaration of intentions was also very
clear about the ultimate objective: over time the monuments in squares – plaques,
statues and so forth – could disappear. What was needed was something immov-
able and indestructible; it had to be a large, hugely ambitious monument; and for
this reason it was designed to reach into the entrails of the earth. In the end, the
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basilica was excavated out of the rock in a place called Risco de la Nava, ‘making it
into a construction that is permanent and eternal and that rests in the earth, at the
same time as rising above it’.28
Around this construction, which is topped by a cross almost 150 metres high,
was built the monastery for the Benedictine monks (on the western side), together
with the library and a study centre. On the south side, a large, at area leading
into the church precinct was created. A large lake in the shape of a cross was also
planned, but ultimately could not be built. However, what was built was a funicular
railway to take people from the at area up to the base of the cross. e end result
was a complex that, beyond the various interpretations that can be made of it, is
spectacular, exactly as was hoped. e nave of the basilica is only slightly smaller
than that of Saint Peter’s Basilica (262 metres long and 18 metres wide). Enormous
bronze sculptures (apparently cast from cannons used in the civil war) and stone
were placed inside it, and in the six side chapels there are various representations
of the Virgin Mary in dierent manifestations associated with the history of Spain,
each of being a patron saint of a section or group of the Spanish armed forces.29
Various large sculptures are located in the transept and at the altar. In front of and
behind the altar are buried José Antonio Primo de Rivera and Francisco Franco,
and over their tombs there is a large cupola with a mosaic representing typical reli-
gious images. ‘Beside the group of the Assumption of the Virgin’, meanwhile, ‘are
the fallen civilians and clerics and the fallen soldiers of the War of 1936–39’.30 In
the cupola there are representations of Saint Teresa of Jesus, who became Franco’s
favourite saint.31 e result is a spectacular monumental and religious whole,
where one constantly feels and breathes the memory not of civil war, but of the
Francoist victory in the Spanish Civil War.
Originally, as I have explained, the aim was to complete the monument within
one year and to place within it the remains of the Francoist soldiers who had been
interred in temporary cemeteries all over the state or those of martyrs assassinated
in the Republican rear. Great respect was expected and anticipated. e plan was
announced in the ocial bulletins of the provinces and in the newspapers. It was
not considered necessary to ask permission from the families of the Francoist sol-
diers to transfer their remains, unless they had specically asked for them not to
be transferred or for them to be taken somewhere other than Cuelgamuros. e
crypts in the aisles of the basilica and in the sides of the transept were planned
and built. When the monument was nally inaugurated in 1959, twenty years
had passed since the end of the civil war. By that time the enthusiasm that might
have existed in 1940 for families to request or agree that the remains of their loved
ones be exhumed and transferred for interment in the great monument to victory
had melted away. ere were even communities that opposed any movement of
remains; most signicantly, the Carlists refused to allow their dead to be moved to
the crypts of Cuelgamuros.32 ere was also erce opposition from the Association
of the Families of Martyrs of Paracuellos to their dead being moved.33 In addition
to the opposition and refusals was the fact that all over Spain, when local councils
were asked for information about the existence of civil war mass graves, whether
within or outside of their municipal cemeteries, they oen replied that within the
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municipal boundaries there were burials of Republican (‘Rojos’ or ‘red’) soldiers:
‘As this area was a front in the war, there are various individual and collective
burial sites of soldiers of the red army, unidentied and of unknown numbers,
some of which are now dicult to locate.’34 It has yet to be conrmed whether or
not the Catholic Church inuenced the regime in 1959 to agree to interring the
remains of the dead from both sides of the struggle, in order to obtain the Vatican’s
consent for the church’s designation as a basilica, which took place in 1960.35
Whatever the case, quite aside from any explicit requests for, oers of or opposi-
tion to the transfer of remains, the regime wanted to ll the crypts with the remains
of the dead of the civil war period – initially only those of the victors, but later those
of both sides. To this end, it created a specic commission within the Council of
Works of the Monument to the Fallen, which had been in operation since 1941.36
e aim of the commission was to collect all information relating to the existing
burial places of victims of the civil war and to manage their transfer to the Valley of
the Fallen so that on the day of its inauguration the crypts would contain remains
representative of the whole state.
erefore in 1958, and in an international context that was very dierent from
that of 1940, the regime contacted each and every Spanish local council through
the Ministry of Administration for information on individual or communal burials
that had occurred during the civil war and that were located within their municipal
boundaries. In the notices that were sent out it was clearly specied that the bodies
could belong to either side of the conict and could be those of civilians or soldiers.
e rst of the notices was very clear on this matter:
One of the main aims that determined the construction of the National Monument
to the Fallen in the Valley of Cuelgamuros (Guadarrama) was to provide a place of
interment for those who were sacriced for God and for Spain and for all those who
fell in our Crusade, without distinction of the side on which they fought, as required
by the Christian spirit that inspired this major work, so that it should be Spanish in
nationality and Catholic in religion.37
Once the commission had collected all the required information it decided
which human remains would be transferred and issued appropriate orders for this
to be done.38 is included providing specications for the wooden caskets that
would contain the remains – the type of wood, the measurements and even the
black paint with which they were to be painted.
At the same time an announcement was published in the provincial bulletins to
the eect that those families of martyrs to the war who so wished could also take
charge of the transfer of remains from their respective municipalities. ere were
few requests from these families; as has been mentioned, there was even some
opposition to certain transfers being made. However, the remains that began to
be transferred, primarily in army lorries from all over the state, were those of
Francoist soldiers that had until then been in temporary military cemeteries and of
Republican soldiers that had been interred in mass graves. e former were identi-
ed (if not individualised), because when they had been interred during the civil
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Figures 1 and 2 Documentation that was in the glass bottles of the Francoist
soldiers buried in the cemetery of Batea (Tarragona). Detail of one of the
identication documents, on which is written: ‘X.X. Legionnaire (face destroyed)
Fo 2nd bis No 21 C.A.(4th Navarra).’ Municipal Archives of Batea (Tarragona).
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war the rebels’ order of January 1937 had been followed that specied that fallen
soldiers should be buried with a glass bottle containing their identity papers by
their head or feet (gures 1 and 2).39
Republican soldiers were rarely interred with any identication and were oen
recorded as ‘Unknown’ in the book in which were inscribed the details of those
interred in the crypts of the Valley of the Fallen, despite the fact that there was de-
nite information concerning the town from which the wooden caskets containing
their remains had come.
In 1959, 11,329 sets of remains were interred (or reinterred) in the Valley of the
Fallen, followed by a further 2,502 in 1960 and 6,608 in 1961. Remains continued
to be interred there every year until 1983, when the nal interment was recorded
in the register that was kept by the Benedictine monks and that now belongs to
National Heritage. Although it is impossible to give an exact gure because of the
circumstances surrounding the opening of the graves in the 1960s and the way in
which the remains were exhumed, in 2011 National Heritage established that in
total 33,847 bodies were interred in the crypts. is calculation was made at the
request of the Commission of Experts on the Future of the Valley of the Fallen,40
which was created in the same year.
In theory, families were supposed to receive a document aer the process of
reinterment that certied the crypt and columbarium in which the remains of their
loved ones were nally laid to rest. However, these documents have been found in
many civil government and local council archives,41 meaning that it is dicult to
establish to what extent those who could have been informed did in fact receive the
information.
A new Escorial
Let us now look in greater detail at the geographical location of the monument
and its technical characteristics. e Valley of the Fallen is sited very close to
another large monument that is important in the establishment and conguration
of Spanish identity, namely the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial,
which was built in the sixteenth century by Philip II and is where the kings and
queens of Spain have been buried since that time. e Valley of the Fallen is nine
kilometres from El Escorial (at present twelve minutes by car) and on a higher
slope (El Escorial being at an altitude of 1,028 metres and the Valley of the Fallen
at 1,758 metres). It also occupies a larger area of land (33,327m2 for El Escorial, but
1,377 hectares for the Valley of the Fallen). e two monuments feature the same
elements (although the latter has a few additional ones): a monastery, a basilica, a
library and a youth centre, with the desire to make a lake in the form of a cross at
Cuelgamuros never having been fullled. If we also look at the detailed numbers
concerning volumes and surface areas, we can see that in every respect the Valley
of the Fallen surpasses El Escorial.42 e most remarkable, visual and signicant
example of this is the great cross that rises above the Francoist monument, which is
150 metres high and visible from a distance of forty kilometres. ese details alone
bear witness to a desire to surpass what had been built previously.
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Was Franco attempting to rival and outdo the royal pantheon? From the per-
spective of its construction, it is obvious that even if this was not the intention
(no document has yet been found in which this aim is explicitly expressed), he did
indeed achieve it. Not only was El Escorial a source of inspiration, as Fernando
Olmeda claims,43 but in this regard there was also a wish to surpass it. But what
about at a symbolic level?
Although there was a later (frustrated) attempt by the regime to change the
status of the monument,44 in the early years it was clear for whom the crypts were
to be. e decree initiating the construction of the Valley of the Fallen is explicit,
specifying that the monument will be where there shall be raised a grand temple to
our dead in which for centuries to come prayers will be said for those who fell for
God and the nation; a permanent place of pilgrimage where the greatness of nature
will bestow dignity upon the eld in which the heroes and martyrs of the Crusade
are laid to rest.45
Likewise, on the day when the construction of the new temple began in 1940 a
mass was said, and ‘at the end of the religious ceremony the priest himself prayed
out loud an oration for all the martyrs and those fallen for the nation’.46 Republican
soldiers and civilians were never considered as ‘martyrs and fallen’. In 1942 they
were still talking very explicitly about the remains that were to be laid to rest in the
Table 1 Number of individuals whose remains were interred in the Valley of the
Fallen and year of interment
Year Number of interments
1959 11,329
1960 2,502
1961 6,608
1962 1,115
1963 1,656
1964 2,904
1965 895
1966 1,467
1967 97
1968 2,919
1969 648
1970 87
1971 1,222
1972 23
1973 56
1974 10
1975 3
1977 1
1981 304
1983 1
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crypts of Cuelgamuros: ‘News has also been announced of the great national mon-
ument to the heroes of our war of liberation, which on the initiative of El Caudillo
is to be erected in the Valley of the Fallen, near the Monastery of El Escorial.’47 And
the monument was thought of in a similar vein in 1952, when internal and external
political circumstances had already begun to change substantially, the most signi-
cant development being the reopening of foreign embassies in Spain in 1950. Spain
was beginning to emerge from isolationism, but the Valley of the Fallen continued
to be for certain people only.
In that year, in a lengthy article published in La Vanguardia Española, one of
the main state newspapers, on 20 November (the date when José Antonio Primo
de Rivera was executed) the state of the works was presented and even a plea was
made to the mothers of those who had died during the war – although only to the
mothers of the victors:
To the le and right are the galleries for the interments. We wish here to ask all
mothers to take their mourning to this immortal place. ere is only one thing to
consider. In any other cemetery, aer three generations all trace of heroic prowess
will have disappeared, whereas in the Valley of the Fallen those who died on the eld
of battle or in any summary execution will deservingly have their memory perpetu-
ated forever.48
A new pantheon was being built. It was greater than that of San Lorenzo de El
Escorial and was for a new dynasty born of the blood of the fallen, its cement being
the remains of the heroes and martyrs who had died defending a new, Francoist
Spain. e Valley of the Fallen had to be the greatest temple of the new political
religion, which was based on a new vision of the world in which, ‘if José Antonio
was the Prophet, El Caudillo is the Messiah, the incarnation of God and the
Fatherland, the supreme priest of the religion of state accompanied by the Holy
Spirit of Hispanidad’.49
From the very beginning of the works, the press had begun to make comparisons
between the two monuments. La Vanguardia Española recorded ‘the symbolic
inauguration of the grand monument that will immortalise the memory of the
fallen’. It explained that ‘the place chosen is at a higher altitude than the site of
the monastery of San Lorenzo’.50 e monument was an ‘admirable work that
will immortalise El Caudillo’,51 in the words of the President of the Philippines
following a visit to the works at Cuelgamuros in 1951. Visiting the Valley of the
Fallen became obligatory for all foreign representatives who began to visit Spain in
an ocial capacity, both while the works were progressing and once the nished
project had been inaugurated. e visit, an interview with the dignitary, the tour
itself and photos of activities: everything was fully recorded by the newspapers for
both the broadest and the most politicised audiences. What better way to introduce
the new monument to society than through the visits of foreigners who marvelled
at its size and grandeur?
e usual tour involved visiting the monastery at El Escorial and then the works
at Cuelgamuros, with more time spent at the latter. e newspapers of the time52
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always reported on this tour, which by 1959 had been undertaken by the minis-
ter of foreign aairs of Peru, Manuel Gallagher (October 1951); the president of
Portugal, Craveiro Lopes (May 1953); Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, the Dominican dic-
tator (June 1954); the Greek eld marshal Alexandros Papagos (October 1954); the
shah of Persia (May 1957); and the Egyptian minister of foreign aairs (November
1957).
e reactions of these visitors of the 1950s were always admiration for the way
in which the whole site was taking shape, but the visit that best expressed Franco’s
pretensions was that of the minister of foreign aairs of Peru, Manuel Gallagher,
who stated that ‘the Valley of the Fallen, not only by its construction, but also by
the signicance of its location next to the monastery of El Escorial, is a demonstra-
tion that Spain is rising once more victorious’.53 On 20 November 1952, in the same
article quoted above,54 there was further explanation of these pretensions, and a
mystical and supernatural aura was bestowed upon the dictator for having thought
up the whole concept and chosen the site when the war had only just ended:
Only one question can express the concerns and perplexity of the visiting journalist:
‘Is it better than El Escorial?’ No, in fact it is something dierent. Philip II ordered
his men to build a monument to commemorate victory that was, given the meagre
resources available, a master work, a human work. Franco, who was already think-
ing about paying tribute to the heroes and martyrs while the Spanish Civil War was
still in progress, at the end of a day of walking found the site and said to the heroic
Moscardó, ‘is is the place.’
e Valley of the Fallen was the new monument for the new Spain, and it was nec-
essary to give it an air of transcendental mysticism. e best cement and founda-
tion for such a perception in the future were the remains of those who had died in
the civil war. e cult of death is more than evident; the monument concentrates
what Francisco Sevillano has described as a ‘culture of war’ that would include
three dierent sections, united one to the other by the idea of the nation: the image
of the enemy, the exaltation of the God-given ‘Caudillo’ and the cult of the ‘fallen’,
which operated in a binary manner by opposing good and evil, the sacred and the
profane, in the struggle for the redemption of Spain.55
An October 1959 feature that reported that the task of transferring remains from
Barcelona to the crypts at Cuelgamuros was almost complete stated:
May we stress how those who died for Spain, for the Spain of the future, will nd
in her entrails, in the rocks of that place known as the Valley of the Fallen, the best
company for their mortal remains. e new Spain wished to oer them this major
work, this distinguished nal resting place, as a gi from those who now live looking
to tomorrow, yet rooted in a past that saw unforgettable sacrices.56
As the works advanced and a possible date for inauguration grew closer, one can
increasingly see the desire for the Valley of the Fallen to at least equal San Lorenzo
de El Escorial. e newspaper Imperio published an article on 17 July 1957 with
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the long title ‘e Valley of the Fallen will commemorate Spanish history and
heroism for ever. A monument for the contemplation of the centuries to come. A
new Escorial for fervent pilgrimage.’ e article added nothing to what was already
known about the monument, but besides the explicit title, the rst lines of the text
were very clear in respect of the intentions behind the new monument:
e twentieth century in Spain has found its new version of El Escorial. is, like the
previous one, lies some y or sixty kilometres from the capital of the nation, and
already proclaims, with its recently perfected physical nature, that it will be able to
attract the admiration and enthusiasm of those who come aer us.57
Imperio was a mouthpiece for Falangism, the ideological doctrine that Francoism
ocially adopted, so it is not surprising that it promoted the Valley of the Fallen
as the ‘New Escorial’, nor should it be surprising that it raised it up as a place of
pilgrimage for a new race, making explicit the fascist vision of its political religion:
Exaltation in stone, in wood, in painting and metal, of the character and sanctity of
the race, from the moment of the race’s consciousness of its own national being. at
is all. e centuries to come will be able to weigh up the huge undertaking that is
about to be inaugurated better than we can.58
e Falangists most vehemently put forward the claim that the Valley of the
Fallen should be a new Escorial as a place of interment for those who had lost their
lives for the ‘New Spain’. is makes sense when one considers that the cult of the
martyrs and the fallen was the rst ritual expression of the Falangist aesthetic.59
On 4 October 1958 a clearly Falangist lawyer from Barcelona, Juan Vidal Salvó,60
published an editorial comparing Franco to Philip II and highlighting the qualities
of the former to those of the latter:
But the Generalísimo, who never gave in to obstacles, as his life as a ghter exem-
plies, did not follow the path of the prudent King Philip II in order to overcome
bureaucratic problems. When Philip II decided to build the monastery of El Escorial,
he charged a commission of technicians with looking for a site for such a transcen-
dental undertaking. But Franco personally tackled the problem, and one day in 1938,
in the middle of our War of Liberation, travelling with a reduced entourage, which
included the hero of the Alcázar de Toledo, Lieutenant General Moscardó, in the vast
lands of Cuelgamuros, imposing in its mountainous ferocity, he found what he had
been seeking with such great eort. ere would be built the monument intended to
perpetuate the memory of the Fallen of the Crusade.61
Notice that, as in 1952, Franco is the one who has a vision, alongside the heroic
Moscardó, of the place where the Valley of the Fallen should be built. is theme
was to be repeated in the various reports focused on the monument. ere was a
desire to transform Cuelgamuros into a mystical place, thanks to its location close
to El Escorial, to its omnipresence and to the human remains transferred to it. e
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poet Lope Mateo62 wished to contribute to giving transcendence to the monument
and wrote in October 1958:
e sound of your bells carries us out of time, beyond time, where God resides. In
you, Cuelgamuros, we see a Spain that is transcended, ascendant, perplexed by an
innity that leaves here the great ossuary of its children to move forward with its own
history, crying out for the winds of the future. And what else could Spain do, but oer
its time, its time of heroism and mourning to perpetuate it into eternity?
Just one day before the inauguration of the whole complex, on 31 March 1959, the
remains of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of the Spanish Falange, were
brought from El Escorial. He had been executed in November 1936 in Alicante,
where he had initially been buried. At the end of the war his remains had been trans-
ferred to El Escorial, an event that lasted ten days and saw the involvement of a great
number of lay people and the conversion of José Antonio into the undoubted martyr
of the dictatorship, as Zira Box63 has analysed in depth. It was another temporary
interment, as in 1959 the remains of José Antonio was transferred once more, this
time to what was to become the pantheon of the new Spain, the Valley of the Fallen.
On this occasion there was again a great showpiece of an event, with the con
borne on the shoulders of bearers right up to the new basilica, where José Antonio
was interred behind the great altar. e 1959 ceremony was not as opulent as that
of 1939, and Franco did not attend, nor did he receive the con at Cuelgamuros.
Nevertheless, the intention was clearly to establish the new place of pilgrimage for
the new Spain based on the remains deposited in the crypts of the Valley. And it
could not be without those of the gure who had been turned into the rst of the
fallen and a martyr: José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Spanish Falange.
Spanish kings and princes were interred at El Escorial, but the monument of the
new Francoist Spain, the Valley of the Fallen, would be the eternal resting place of
the human remains of the representatives of a new dynasty – perhaps not one of
blood, but certainly one of ideology and unity in victory. e original idea was that
those who had died defending their country and religion would be interred there,
with the last to be interred being the dictator himself.
Notes
1 J. Rodrigo, Hasta la raíz: Violencia durante la Guerra Civil y la dictadura
franquista (Madrid, Alianza, 2008).
2 J. Cuesta, La Odisea de la memoria. Historia de la memoria en España. Siglo XX
(Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 2008).
3 Founder of the Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (JONS), a political party
close to fascism that merged in 1934 with Falange Española, the fascist party
founded by José Antonio Primo de Rivera. He died during the civil war.
4 A Spanish soldier who led the failed coup d’état on 18 July 1936 that led to the
Spanish Civil War. He died during the civil war in an air accident, at the spot
where the monument was erected.
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5 e one published in 1983, which went into three editions, was an update of a
previous book which had been published in 1977 under the same title (Madrid,
Ed. Sedmay) but which had not had much impact. e author died in 1986, and
the publishing house La Esfera de los Libros republished the book in 2006.
6 F. Olmeda, El Valle de los Caídos. Una memoria de España (Barcelona, Península,
2009).
7 Razones por las que se construyó la basílica del Valle de los Caídos (Reasons Why
the Basilica of the Valley of the Fallen Was Built) (Madrid, Fundación Francisco
Franco, 1976).
8 J. Blanco, El Valle de los Caídos. Ni presos políticos ni trabajos forzados (Madrid,
Fuerza Nueva, 2009).
9 Q. Solé, Els morts clandestins: Les fosses comunes de la Guerra Civil a Catalunya
(1936–1939) (Barcelona, Editorial Afers, 2008); Q. Solé, ‘El secreto del Valle: Los
nombres de los miles de muertos trasladados por Franco desde las fosas catalanas’,
Sapiens, 67 (2008), 15–20; Q. Solé, ‘Inhumados en el Valle de los Caídos: Los
primeros traslados desde la provincia de Madrid’, Hispania Nova, 9 (2009),
220–49, http://hispanianova.rediris.es (accessed 25 January 2016).
10 A. Bárcena, ‘Redención de penas en el Valle de los Caídos: las fuentes rebaten el
mito’, Aportes, 79:2 (2012), 5–29.
11 B. Moreno Garrido and J. C. Rueda Laond, ‘Televisión y Memorias sobre la
Violencia’, Hispania Nova, 10 (2012), 659–80, http://hispanianova.rediris.es
(accessed 10 January 2016).
12 Cuesta, La Odisea de la memoria.
13 Z. Box, ‘La Fundación de un régimen. La Construcción simbólica del franquismo’,
doctoral thesis, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2008, http://eprints.ucm.
es/8572/1/T30783.pdf (accessed 25 January 2016).
14 P. Aguilar, ‘Los Lugares de la memoria de la guerra civil. El Valle de los Caídos:
la ambigüedad calculada’, in J. Tusell (ed.), El Régimen de Franco, 1936–1975:
política y relaciones exteriors, 485–498 (Madrid, UNED, 1993).
15 Ibid.
16 K. Hite, Política y arte de la conmemoración. Memoriales en América Latina y
España (Santiago de Chile, Mandrágora, 2013).
17 Translator’s note: All quotations from Hite, Política y arte de la conmemoración
have been back-translated from the Spanish-language version of the work.
18 L. Castro, Héroes y caídos: Políticas de la memoria en la España contemporánea.
(Madrid, Catarata, 2008).
19 M. Albert-Llorca, ‘Les Avatars de la mémoire des morts de la guerre civile
espagnole (1936–1939) et le mausolée du Valle de los Caídos’, in A. Bouchy and
M. Ikesawa (eds), La Mort collective et le politique: Constructions mémorielles et
ritualisations (Tokyo, Institut des sciences humaines et sociales, Université de
Tokio, 2011).
20 F. Ferrandiz, El Pasado bajo tierra. Exhumaciones contemporáneas de la Guerra
Civil (Barcelona, Anthropos, 2014).
21 A. González-Ruibal, ‘Topography of Terror or Cultural Heritage? e Monuments
of Franco’s Spain’, in N. Forbes, R. Page and G. Pérez (eds), Europe’s Deadly
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Century: Perspectives on 20th Century Conict Heritage (London, English
Heritage, 2009), pp. 65–72.
22 NO-DO, the initials of Noticiarios y Documentales Cinematográcos (Cinema
News and Documentaries), http://www.rtve.es/lmoteca/no-do/not-848/1487547/
(accessed December 2014).
23 Moreno and Rueda, ‘Televisión y Memorias sobre la Violencia’, 29.
24 e majority of the lms and documentaries mentioned can easily be found on the
internet.
25 F. Ferrándiz, ‘Guerras sin n. Guía para descifrar el Valle de los Caídos en la
España contemporánea’, Política y Sociedad, 48:3 (2001), 481–500; F. Ferrándiz, El
Pasado bajo tierra. Exhumaciones contemporáneas de la Guerra Civil (Barcelona,
Anthropos, 2014).
26 Boletín Ocial del Estado, 2 April 1940, 2240.
27 Ibid.
28 Hite, Política y arte de la conmemoración, p. 38.
29 e relationship between religion and the army in the Spanish state has always
been very close, to the point where on 1 October 2012 the minister of the interior,
Jorge Fernández Díaz (Partido Popular), awarded the Great Cross of the Order
of Merit of the Guardia Civil (a militarised body in Spain) to the Virgin del Pilar,
who is the patron of that body. See the order published in the Boletín Ocial del
Estado at https://www.boe.es/diario_boe/txt.php?id=BOE-A-2012-12277 (accessed
December 2014). e dierent patron saints of the Spanish armed forces and of
the Guardia Civil can be found at http://www.portalcultura.mde.es/actividades/
aniversarios/Conmemoraciones/Patronos_Patronas/ (accessed December
2015).
30 Explained in detail on the website www.valledeloscaidos.es (accessed November
2014).
31 G. Di Febo, Ritos de guerra y de victoria en la España franquista (Bilbao, Desclée
de Brouwer, 2002).
32 S. Nonell Bru, Así eran nuestros muertos (Barcelona, Casulleras, 1966).
33 Olmeda, El Valle de los Caídos, pp. 194–9; Solé, Els morts clandestins, pp. 120–4.
34 Provincial Archives of Lérida, Lérida, Civil Government Collection, Transfer of
remains to the Valley of the Fallen, municipal district of La Sentiu de Sió.
35 D. Sueiro, El Valle de los Caídos. Los secretos de la cripta franquista (Barcelona,
Argos Vergara, 1983), p. 208; Solé, Els morts clandestins, p. 152.
36 General Archives of the Administration, Alcalá de Henares (hereaer AGA),
Interior Collection, le 44.
37 Ibid.
38 Solé, ‘Inhumados en el Valle de los Caídos’.
39 F. Etxeberria and K. Pla, El Cementerio de las botellas. El Fuerte de San Cristóbal
en la memoria: de prisión a sanatorio penitenciario (Pamplona: Aranzadi/Pamiela/
Txinparta, 2014), p. 117.
40 Report by the Commission of Experts on the Future of the Valley of the Fallen.
Delivered to the Ministry of the Presidency in Madrid, 29 November 2011, p.
11, http://www.memoriahistorica.gob.es/NR/rdonlyres/0F532FC5-FE23-4B8D-
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AA3A-06ED4BFAFC49/184261/InformeComisinExpertosValleCados.pdf
(accessed February 2015).
41 Solé, Els morts clandestins; J. Díaz Arriaza (ed.), Un rojo amanecer (Seville,
Patronato del Real Alcázar, 2011).
42 See the website of Patrimonio Nacional (National Heritage), which now manages
both monuments: http://www.patrimonionacional.es/real-sitio (accessed 25
January 2016).
43 Olmeda, El Valle de los Caídos.
44 P. Aguilar, Memoria y olvido de la Guerra Civil española (Madrid, Alianza
Editorial, 1996).
45 Boletín Ocial del Estado, 2 April 1940, 2240.
46 ‘El Caudillo preside la inauguración simbólica del grandioso monumento que
inmortalizará la memoria de los Caídos’, La Vanguardia Española, 2 April 1940,
p. 2.
47 ‘El Caudillo preside la inauguración de las Exposiciones de Arquitectura Alemana
Moderna y de Trabajo de Arquitectura Española’, La Vanguardia Española, 7 May
1942, p. 1.
48 ‘La construcción del monumento nacional en el “Valle de los Caídos”’, La
Vanguardia Española, 20 November 1952, p. 4.
49 L. Zenobi, La Construcción del mito de Franco (Madrid, Cátedra, 2011), p. 332.
50 ‘El Caudillo preside la inauguración simbólica del grandioso monumento que
inmortalizará la memoria de los Caídos’, La Vanguardia Española, 2 April 1940,
p. 2.
51 ‘La estancia del presidente de Filipinas en España’, La Vanguardia Española, 7
October 1951, p. 1.
52 ‘La estància del presidente Quirino en Madrid’, La Vanguardia Española, 6
October 1951, p. 1; ‘Manifestaciones del ministro de Asuntos exteriores en Perú
a los periodistas’, 12 October 1951, La Vanguardia Española, p. 1; ‘La estancia del
Presidente de Portugal en España: La visita al Monumento nacional a los Caídos’,
La Vanguardia Española, p. 1; ‘El Caudillo y el presidente portuguès visitaron
El Escorial y el Monumento a los Caídos’, Hoja del Lunes, 18 May 1953; ‘Franco
y Trujillo visitan El Escorial. Oraron ante la tumba de José Antonio. También
estuvieron en El Valle de los Caídos’, Imperio: Diario de Zamora, 10 June 1954,
p. 1; ‘En compañía de S. E. el Jefe del Estado, el Sha realizó ayer una detenida visita
al Museo del Prado. Por la tarde, y también acompañado por el Caudillo, visito El
Escorial y el Valle de los Caídos’, La Vanguardia Española, 25 May 1957, p. 1.
53 ‘Manifestaciones del ministro de Asuntos exteriores en Perú a los periodistas’, La
Vanguardia Española, 12 October 1951, p. 1.
54 ‘La construcción del monumento nacional en el “Valle de los Caídos”’, La
Vanguardia Española, 20 November 1952, p. 4.
55 F. Sevillano Calero, ‘La Propaganda y la construcción de la cultura de guerra
en España durante la guerra civil’, Studia historica: Historia contemporània, 32
(2014), 225–37.
56 ‘El traslado de varios caídos al Valle de Cuelgamuros’, La Vanguardia Española, 12
March 1959, p. 21.
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57 A. Antúnez, ‘El Valle de los Caídos perpetuará la historia y el heroísmo hispanos’,
Imperio: Diario de Zamora, 17 July 1957, p. 6.
58 Antúnez, ‘El Valle de los Caídos perpetuará la historia y el heroísmo hispanos’.
59 Sevillano, ‘La Propaganda y la construcción’.
60 Catalan Falangist (1897–1974), lawyer and writer, who is believed to have been the
rst head of the Falange in Barcelona in 1933.
61 ‘Franco y el Valle de los Caídos’, La Vanguardia Española, 4 October 1958, p. 4.
62 Journalist and poet (1898–1970), who won numerous prizes as a poet and worked
on various Spanish newspapers.
63 Box, ‘La Fundación de un régimen’.
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