The Battle of the Valley Continues

The Spanish Left’s war on history has just suffered a major setback. On Monday, June 15th, Madrid’s Tribunal Superior de Justicia (Upper Court of Justice) suspended construction work in the Valley of the Fallen, now rebaptised in anodyne fashion as the ‘Valle de Cuelgamuros.’ Understandably, the judges argue that the government-mandated project to convert the monument into a “space of democratic memory” poses a high risk of loss of historical heritage. The catch is that the destruction of the Valley’s artistic and historical heritage value isn’t merely an undesired side effect of the ‘resignification’ programme—instead, the symbolic castration of the monument is the whole purpose of Sánchez’ odious enterprise. 

The Valley of the Fallen has long occupied a central place in the war for Spain’s historical memory. The spectacular monument, which includes a basilica excavated under the Sierra de Guadarrama and the tallest Christian cross in the world, was built at the wishes of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Originally thought of as a “national act of atonement,” the complex began construction in 1940 and took 18 long years to build. Some 40,000 soldiers who perished in the country’s civil war, which lasted from 1936 to 1939, are buried at the site. These include men from both the Nationalist and the Republican camps, symbolising national reconciliation after the horrors of internecine conflict.

Following his death, in November 1975, Generalissimo Francisco Franco was buried in the monument. Contrary to popular belief, however, he had neither wished nor planned to be buried there. In fact, no tomb had been built for him in advance at the church; it had to be suddenly readied after the Caudillo’s passing. The idea of burying Franco at the Valley appears to have come from King Juan Carlos I, then head of the transitional government that would, in the coming years, lead Spain to democracy. 

But historical truth is of little importance in politics—particularly when lies are of greater convenience to politicians of little scruple. In 2009, the Socialist government of José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero closed the Valley to visitors. Back then, the publicly invoked reasons were technical—but the real motive, of course, was ideological.

Under Pedro Sánchez, the political manipulation of Spain’s troubled historical memory went way further. In 2019, Sánchez had Franco’s bones exhumed from the Valley and ignominiously reinterred in a cemetery near Madrid. The measure was rejected by Franco’s family, with his grandson Louis de Bourbon, Duke of Anjou and Legitimist claimant to the throne of France, fighting it tooth and nail in the courts. 

Franco’s exhumation was of dubious legality and patent immorality. But perhaps what made it more loathsome was the pettiness of it all: the heirs of those defeated in 1939 abusing their power to take revenge on the dead. Franco, whatever his flaws, gave tens of thousands of his former enemies the honour of burial in that most spectacular of monuments. Sánchez’ programme for the Valley is the exact opposite: he is summoning the long-silent ghosts of the past in an attempt to publicly humiliate the victors of the civil war. In so doing, he has likely opened Pandora’s box—even if he has not yet realised it.

And yet, Franco’s 2019 eviction from the Valley was only the beginning of a long-standing campaign to erase it from collective conscience. In 2022, Sánchez went further by having his Ley de la Memória Democratica (Law on Democratic Memory) approved by the Spanish Cortes. The scandalous legislation demonises the Nacionales who won the war and saved Spain from the fate of a Bolshevik takeover while lionising their Republican, Stalin-sponsored opponents. As far as the Valley is concerned, it suggested transforming the place into an ordinary cemetery while mandating the removal of ‘Francoist’ symbols. It also gave the government the justification it wanted to give José António Primo de Rivera, the founder and leader of the right-wing Falange, the same treatment as it had dispensed to Franco. Primo de Rivera’s body, also interred in the Valley’s main church, was thus forcibly removed. Sánchez’ plot to have the Valley sanitised is just the culmination of his thirst for revenge.

His defeat this week, however, really did sting. First, because the courts themselves denounced the real intention behind his project for the Valley: the destruction of valued artistic heritage for reasons of pure ideological revanche. Secondly, because it comes, perhaps, at the worst of times for the Spanish prime minister. For Sánchez, who so often used battles over history as distractions for his failings as leader, the moment couldn’t be less amiable: this week, both his own wife, Begoña Gómez, and his predecessor Zapatero have been summoned to court over accusations of influence peddling. Like Sánchez’ wife, his brother, David, is similarly on trial for similar crimes. If found guilty, he can be sentenced to three years in jail. 

With his government falling apart and the opposition calling for a snap election, Sánchez was surely hoping that a televised Beeldenstorm and the ritualised destruction of Francoist imagery would both delight the Left and infuriate the Right. At the very least, the commotion caused would have been, as in times past, a welcome distraction. But it was not to be: that trump card was snatched from him. It would be divinely poetic, indeed, if this week’s defeat turned out to be the beginning of the end for Sánchez, a man so utterly devoid of principles, morals, or scruples.