As she wandered the tree-lined paths, looking for graves from the civil war era, a local resident approached and asked what she was doing. They were dug up and moved decades ago. The Valley of the Fallen. Puri was elated—and crestfallen. Finally, she had a clue to follow. But she knew that if Manuel was truly in the Valley of the Fallen, she would never get his body back.
The Valley was untouchable. The Valley of the Fallen was the brain-child of Franco himself. He declared his intention to build the site, a towering Catholic basilica and civil war memorial outside Madrid, in , one year after the end of the civil war. But from the beginning it was clear the Valley would be something else entirely.
Built in part by Republican political prisoners, the basilica would in time hold only two visible tombs: one for Franco, and one for the founder of the Falange, a far-right political party that helped propel the Nationalists to power.
Construction took nearly 20 years. In death, Franco would watch over them all. In total, 33, bodies were moved, largely in secret and without the knowledge or consent of relatives. But it was impossible to hide the process entirely, and some people, like the man Puri met in the Calatayud cemetery, had witnessed it.
Local officials had also kept some records, including a report stating that on April 8, , nine pinewood caskets containing 81 bodies from Calatayud arrived at the Valley of the Fallen and were placed in a crypt inside the basilica.
Puri visited for the first time in , after learning about the transfer of bodies from Calatayud. She kept returning anyway, a stubborn gesture that was half pilgrimage and half protest.
Still, she never felt comfortable visiting. I asked Puri what she felt during her visits. On the car seat beside me was a transparent orange folder containing all the photographs, records, certificates and other documents Puri had accumulated in the course of her search. On top was a handsome portrait of Manuel, taken not long before he was killed. The entire Valley complex is awesome and intimidating, just as Franco intended.
A grand esplanade offers sweeping views of the surrounding countryside, and two immense stone colonnades channel visitors toward a bronze entryway. The basilica itself is an astonishing feat of engineering, carved feet directly into the granite of the mountain. When Pope John XXIII visited in , he consecrated only the innermost portion of the basilica; if he had consecrated the entire space, it would have eclipsed St.
When we arrived, there was already a long line of buses and cars waiting to enter. National Heritage, the government agency responsible for the site, had offered relatives of the deceased free entrance for life, but Puri rejected the offer.
The Spanish government has tried, fitfully and unsuccessfully, to settle the issue of the Valley, or at least to alter the site to make it palatable to all Spaniards. In , a left-leaning prime minister introduced the first legislation to take on the legacy of the war and dictatorship. One prominent historian at Complutense University of Madrid, foreseeing no hope for success, rejected his invitation to serve on the commission. The statues look down on you. Past the entryway, in a dark, domed antechamber lit by flickering lights styled as medieval torches, stand two statues of angels with swords in hand.
The angels were forged from melted cannons used in the civil war, and their blades are thrust down into the walkway as a sign that the battle has ended and peace has arrived. They are a procession of death and wrath, God at his most vengeful: hellish beasts and exterminating angels, visions of apocalypse that seem to grow darker and more frightening the deeper you walk into the belly of the mountain. Just before the altar, where the nave gives way to wooden pews, eight towering granite monks keep watch.
Like the angels that precede them, the monks, positioned near the top of the vaulted ceiling, rest their hands on immense swords, and they peer down with eyes eerily hidden beneath the hoods of their robes.
The aura of holy wrath culminates at the central altar. Atop both lie fresh flowers, replaced each week by the National Francisco Franco Foundation. Franco viewed the Spanish Civil War as a new Crusade waged by loyal believers against Republican atheists. Apart from the two fascist tombs, the remains are hidden in eight crypts lining the walls of the nave and two small chapels set off to the sides of the altar.
Together they hold tens of thousands of dead bodies, stacked three and five stories high. Ranz was young—barely out of law school—but he had already been working on cases related to historical memory for several years, including exhumations. The case was audacious, unprecedented and potentially transformative. But despite the political progress of the previous decade, it was not a promising moment for advocates of reform. A year earlier, a conservative government had swept into power, vowing to freeze or roll back many of the initiatives championed by a long-serving leftist government, including state support for exhumations.
The report of the Expert Commission for the Future of the Valley of the Fallen, delivered to the government nine days after the election, went unheeded. The case wound its way through six courts in four years, including the Constitutional Court of Spain and the European Court of Human Rights.
The gambit worked. He ordered that researchers be given access to the tombs in order to conduct DNA tests and identify the brothers for exhumation. But the ruling provoked fierce opposition from the Catholic Church and conservative groups, which decried the opening of the tombs.
Meanwhile, the government began to order report after report in the name of prudence and caution—structural assessments of the tombs, forensic data on the state of the bodies, inspections for water damage, and more.
For Puri, the wait is agonizingly personal: her mother passed away in December, and her father, Manuel Jr. The bodies from Calatayud were placed in the Chapel of the Sepulcher, a small annex of concrete and marble located to the right of the altar.
Inside the chapel, Puri stood quietly facing the door. Except for a few visitors wandering in and out, she had the space to herself. When no one was looking, she reached out and tried the heavy metal doorknob, but it was locked. Then she turned to leave. Behind the basilica, at the base of the towering cross, is the Benedictine Abbey of the Holy Cross of the Valley of the Fallen. They lead daily Mass in the basilica and run a bustling guesthouse and a primary and secondary school.
The monks are at the center of the Valley, both physically and politically. On occasions, this coalition broke down into internecine violence. The Spanish Civil War proved to be a breeding ground for mass atrocities, carried out by belligerents eager to eradicate their ideological opponents. About , people lost their lives in the conflict. Of these, about , died as the result of systematic killings, mob violence, torture, or other brutalities. Anarchists and other radicals often took out their anger against the Catholic clergy, whom they saw as an obstacle to major reform.
Almost 7, Catholic priests, monks, and nuns were killed, primarily in the first months of the revolt. By May , most of the mass killings of priests by Leftist radicals subsided.
Francoist forces too killed liberal-minded or Loyalist clergy. The Nationalists waged a brutal war against the Republic's supporters. Republican women were raped or were publicly humiliated by having their heads shaved. By , more than , individuals were rounded up and sent to about 60 concentration camps. Large numbers of prisoners were conscripted for forced labor or to fight in Franco's army or tried by military courts.
During the war itself, , persons were executed by the Nationalists; after the war ended in spring , another 50, were put to death. Martial law remained in place in Franco's Spain until , and former Republicans were subjected to various forms of discrimination and punishment. The fighting and persecution resulted in several million Spaniards being displaced. Many fled areas of violence for safe refuge elsewhere.
Only a few countries, such as Mexico and the Dominican Republic, opened their doors to Spanish refugees. When the Spanish Civil War ended in , with Franco's victory, some , Spanish Republicans escaped to France, where many were placed in internment camps in the south, such as Gurs , St.
Cyprien, and Les Milles. Following the German defeat of France in spring , Nazi authorities conscripted Spanish Republicans for forced labor and deported more than 30, to Germany, where about half of them ended up in concentration camps.
Some 7, of these became prisoners in Mauthausen ; more than half of them died in the camp. We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia.
View the list of all donors. Trending keywords:. Featured Content. Tags Find topics of interest and explore encyclopedia content related to those topics. The Spanish dictator wanted the country to be recognized by the international community, and little by little the people began to see certain improvements in their social life. In the s, Spain was accepted as a member of the United Nations. Then in , Franco appointed Prince Juan Carlos as his successor.
The country has been a constitutional monarchy ever since. Login Register. When did the Spanish Civil War start?
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