EXHIBITING A CONTESTED PAST
THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR IN CONTEMPORARY
STATE-RUN CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS IN SPAIN
Master Thesis Heritage Studies: Museum Studies 2016 - 2017
Author: Camino Prieto Cadenas
Student Number: 11118849 Supervisor: Dr. Ihab Saloul Second Reader: Dr. Mirjam Hoijtink
Exhibiting a Contested Past:
The Spanish Civil War in Contemporary State-Run Cultural Institutions in
Spain
Author: Camino Prieto Cadenas
Contact: cams.prieto@gmail.com
Supervisor: Dr. Ihab Saloul I.A.M.Saloul@uva.nl Second Reader: Mirjam Hoijtink
M.H.E.Hoijtink@uva.nl
Date: 30 March 2017
Word Count: 25.766
Abstract
The purpose of this master thesis is to examine the way in which the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) is exhibited, narrated and presented to the public in three state-run cultural institutions in contemporary Spain. Through the analysis of three case studies, namely the Valle de los Caídos, the Museo del Ejército, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, it is made clear that the Civil War and the following Francoist dictatorship (1939-1975) are periods of Spanish history that are still contested, as each of the cases offer a different narrative about it. Since the turn of the century, different initiatives in Spain have been directed towards contesting the regime’s version of the past – one that was exclusive and that narrated the period only from the perspective of the winners of the war. These initiatives demand that the memory and experiences of the defeated should be incorporated into the common understanding of the period. In spite of being subordinated to the Spanish state, each of the cases here analysed presents a different position towards these initiatives. From full inclusion to total omission of these demands, the three cultural institutions that this thesis examines serve to illustrate the complex dynamics that still operate in Spain in regard to this period of the past.
Content
Abstract ... 3
Introduction ... 5
Chapter 1. Static Narratives: Franco’s Version of the Past at the Valle de los Caídos ... 16
Franco’s ‘Crusade’ at The Valle de los Caídos ... 20
The Valle de los Caídos Today ... 24
Chapter 2. Lost Opportunities: The Museo del Ejército in Toledo’s Alcázar ... 31
The Alcázar in Francoist Mythology ... 32
Museo del Ejército: Preserving Myths ... 35
The Civil War at the Museo del Ejército ... 39
The Museo del Ejército in Toledo’s Alcázar: Still a Francoist Site of Memory ... 46
Chapter 3. Republican Stories at the Reina Sofía Museum ... 49
Re-Historicizing the Collection ... 51
The Spanish Civil War at the Reina Sofía Museum ... 55
Francoist art: El Gran Olvidado (the Great Forgotten) ... 63
The Reina Sofía: A Site of Memory to Remember the Defeated ... 64
Conclusion ... 68
Bibliography ... 72
Introduction
History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogeneous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now.
- Walter Benjamin (1977: 257) Museums, particularly those representing a nation, are an effective instrument for communities to first, interpret their history, and secondly, to present it to others. Museums can potentially be spaces for reinforcing, wrestling with, and understanding one’s identity at a personal and collective level. The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and the dictatorship led by Francisco Franco (1939-1975) are traumatic and controversial periods of Spain’s twentieth-century history. I cite this brief extract from Walter Benjamin’s “Thesis on the Philosophy of History” to emphasize the role that history still plays in the present: Even though eighty years have passed since the outbreak of the conflict, this past is still very present and plays an important role in Spanish society and politics. In Spain, many would expect that the history that has shaped Spanish identities1 for the past eight decades would be interpreted and presented to the public in a national museum devoted to the period. However, in Spain, there are no state-run cultural institutions like museums
entirely devoted to presenting the war and the dictatorship, nor have there been any
attempts to create them.
In Spain, this troubled past has been repeatedly neglected by the state-run museum sector. The past of war and dictatorial regime is rather dealt with, interpreted, and presented in either temporary exhibitions or in small sections of national and non-national museum’s permanent collections. In his essay “Exhibiting Objects of Memory,” Antonio Monegal argues that museums, exhibitions and memorials are capable of helping users construct an experience of knowledge that differs greatly from the one transmitted by history books, and that has the potential of reaching a wider audience (2008: 241). In Spain, however, there have not been any attempts to create what he calls a “spatial and material culture of memory” (240) by means of institutions as museums, involved in processes of memorializing events like the ones created in other countries in relation to,
1 In her study of the influence and conceptualization of the Civil War in democratic Spain, Katherine O.
Stafford has brilliantly noted how in spite of dividing the country, the Civil War is one of the principal sources for any sort of understanding of Spanish identity today. As much as the memory of this troubled past still fragments Spain, the author argues that it also strangely unites it, because almost all Spaniards, with very varied identities – Basques, Catalans, Andalusians, etc. – have been deeply marked by this legacy. The memory of the Civil War, she defends, has “become a major source of identity in the present” (2015: 8).
for instance, the First and Second World Wars or the Holocaust. The potential role of museums as mediators of memory and historical consciousness is continuously being ignored in Spain.2 The lack of a state-run institution entirely devoted to this past reveals
the complexity of dealing with this history, and mirrors much of the current situation in Spanish society and politics: the period is still a source of confrontation and vivid debates. Moreover, the absence of a museum of these characteristics is intimately linked to the contested nature of the history that would be on display. Creating a narrative about the Civil War and Francoism in a museum is difficult because of this past’s contested nature, and because of the extremely varied experiences and memories of the conflict, that make the different versions of the past differ greatly from one another.
Despite the lack of a state-run cultural institution entirely devoted to interpreting and presenting this troubled past, there are certain heritage sites – spanning from memorials created under the regime, to buildings that played a significant role either during the war or the following years, or museums that deal with certain aspects of the period – that do offer some contextualization, as they are intimately linked to this past. In doing so, they are creating a narrative about it.3 Recent scholarly studies have been dedicated to studying different aspects of the Spanish Civil War and Francoism from a cultural perspective – from critiquing the memory politics of the democratic transition to analysing contemporary culture productions that deal with the period. However, very few, if any, have been devoted to analysing the consequences that institutionalizing this past in cultural institutions such as museums and heritage sites has had for the narrative generated about it.
This master thesis examines the way in which this past has been institutionalised and, more importantly, the way it has been and is narrated in three state-run sites that offer some contextualization on the period, and that therefore provide a space to
2 I follow the definition of historical consciousness given by Sharon Macdonald in her article from 2006,
“Undesirable Heritage: Fascist Material Culture and Historical Consciousness in Nuremberg.” To the author, historical consciousness is “a reflexive and meta-perspective that investigates ways of relating to the past”; historical consciousness is the personal understanding people have, or how people perceive, the past, present, future and their interrelations. A notion of historical consciousness, Macdonald argues, seeks to “theorise people’s awareness of the past, history and historicity” (12).
3 Mieke Bal understands narrative as an account “in any semiotic system in which a subjectivity focalized
sequence of events is presented and communicated” (1994: 87). In her essay “Telling Objects: A Narrative Perspective on Collecting,” the author defends the idea that narratives do not emanate exclusively from verbal texts, and that language is not the only medium to construct them. Objects, images, and media like film, she argues, are also capable of conveying a narrative (1994: 85-86). In this study, I follow Bal’s considerations about, and conception of, narrative.
remember the Civil War: The Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen), monumental memorial, mausoleum to thousands of fallen in the conflict and to Francisco Franco himself, the new Museo del Ejército (Army Museum) situated in Toledo’s Alcázar, a building that played a vital role in the construction of the regime’s narrative about the past, and the modern and contemporary art national museum in Madrid, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCAR or Reina Sofía from now on), home to Pablo Picasso’s Guernica and to a great number of objects from the Civil War era.
These three cultural institutions are managed by state organisms: Patrimonio Nacional (National Heritage), the Ministerio de Defensa (Ministry of Defence), and the Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte (Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports), respectively. That these three sites are under the authority of three governmental organisms is very relevant in this study because in spite of being subordinated to the Spanish state, the three institutions offer different narratives and valuations about this contested history. This thesis will examine the way in which the Civil War is interpreted, presented and narrated to the public in these three cultural institutions.
Mieke Bal considers museums and exhibitions as a discursive practice, one that materializes in narrative form. She has analysed different narration techniques in exhibitions as well as how the objects on display relate to one another and to museum users, concluding that exhibitions propose a narrative, one that emerges from the visitor’s walk through an exhibition (1994, 1996b, 2008, 2010). In her article “Exhibition Practices,” Bal writes:
[In exhibitions] the visitor follows an itinerary with a beginning and an end, one that develops over time, marked by specific rhythms and particular events that emerge in the interaction between the visitor and the objects. The encounters, sometimes slowed down, sometimes sped up by means of juxtapositions and captions, are always directed or, as narrative theory would have it, focalized by the expository agent. In general, this narrative dimension is inevitable, for every visitor moves about the space in time. (2010: 14)
Following this theorization, this study conceives exhibitions and permanent collections presentations as narrative, and analyses how the narrative about this period of the past is constructed in the mentioned sites. This narrative does not only emanate from verbal texts, but is also constructed by objects and images, and by the relationship established between them and the spectators. In some cases, the verbal texts will be the most
important. In others, what becomes relevant is the narrative constructed by the relationship established between the objects on display, and between the objects and the museum users. Therefore, the narration techniques in these three cases will be analysed by means of examining the dialogue established by the different encounters that occur between the objects on display and between the objects and the visitors, as well as by examining the verbal texts given in the three institutions.
The three sites constitute unique spaces to remember the Civil War, and it will be argued here that all of them are important sites of memory in Spain today, although of very different natures. In his seminal study of French history entitled Les Lieux de
mémoire (1984-92) (sites or realms of memory), Pierre Norá defines ‘sites of memory’
as “any significant entity, whether material or non-material in nature, which by dint of human will or the work of time has become a symbolic element of the memorial heritage of any community” (1996: XVII). ‘Site of memory’ refers to any place, object, practice, or concept that has been conferred with historical significance by a community, and therefore can be materialized in archives, museums, memorials (place), commemorations, rituals (practice or concepts), or inherited property, emblems, monuments (objects), to name but a few. During Francoism, the Valley of the Fallen and Toledo’s Alcázar, home to the new Army Museum, became important symbols of the regime and were conferred with the values that it defended. Since the death of Franco until today, little to nothing has been done to alleviate the two site’s symbolic significance for the regime, and both of them will be considered as Francoist sites of memory hereafter. The Reina Sofía museum, on the contrary, has become, since 2010 and due to its collection’s reorganization, a space in which the Civil War can be remembered from a variety of viewpoints. It contains a number of objects that have long been considered as lieux de
mémoire in themselves – Picasso’s Guernica as the best example. However, it will be
argued here that the section dedicated to this period of the past in the museum now constitutes a site of memory in itself, one in which the Civil War can be remembered from the perspective of the defeated in the conflict, and one in which the stories that had been previously silenced can now be heard.
After the death of Franco on November 20, 1975, the war and Francoism would be re-narrated and reconsidered by different agents in a will to create a more inclusive narrative about the past. This reconceptualization of the past is an ongoing process, and aims at accommodating and incorporating different identities, memories and experiences that had previously been neglected during the long lasting regime, and sidelined during
the Transition to Democracy. During Francoism, only one version of the past was permitted and promoted through different mechanisms. The conflict was understood and narrated as a struggle between “good” and “evil”, and rendered as an inevitable confrontation between two opposed and irreconcilable sides. This struggle was referred to as “The Crusade,” and the insurrection as “The Glorious Uprising” in all sorts of productions, spanning from legal documents to films for popular consumption.4 This narrative about the past was exclusive and only included the memories and experiences of one side, that of the winners of the war. The experiences and memories of the defeated were, on the contrary, suppressed in the public sphere and relegated to the private one. These stories were forced to clandestine remembrance within familiar structures, silenced and in some cases condemned to disappear due to the fear of both physical and psychological repression, prosecution, and even death (Aguilar Fernández: 2002).
Paloma Aguilar Fernández is one of the pioneers in working with the memory of the Civil War, the war’s impact during the democratic transition, and the legacy of Francoism in Spanish democracy.5 In her landmark book Memory and Amnesia: The Role of the
Spanish Civil War in the Transition to Democracy , Aguilar Fernández defends that no
real reconciliation ever took place in Spain, neither after the war, nor during the democratic transition (2002: 33). After the war, none of the sides took responsibility for the conflict, and the regime could not admit any guilt for self-perpetuating reasons, as doing so would threaten its legitimacy. Later on, during the democratic transition, the most important objective was to never again endorse civil war. The memory of the war was still very vivid, and the fear of repeating such traumatic events had a peace-making effect during the period. This fear pushed politicians as well as many sectors of civil society towards more reconciliatory positions (Aguilar Fernández, 2002: 25), and lead to prioritizing peace at all costs. The fear of a revival of the conflict resulted in a generalized consensus among the political elite, known as the “pact of forgetting” (Pacto de Olvido): a “tacit agreement” as Aguilar Fernández has called it, to not instrumentalise the past politically “whereby the bellicose and dictatorial past was deemed a forbidden topic of
4 For an in-depth analysis of the regime’s legitimization tools, with a strong focus on heritage, see
Viejo-Rose (2011) and Ramblado-Minero (2011). For the utilization of visual propaganda during the Civil War and Francoism, see Mendelson (2005) and Basilio (2013a). For audiovisual legitimization tools – films and documentaries – produced under Francoism, see Sanchez-Biosca (2005, 2006, 2009).
5 In a wide range of publications, Aguilar Fernández has analysed different aspects of the period spanning
from 1939 to today, always from the perspective of memory (2002, 2008a, 2008b). In this study, I rely heavily on her findings about the shifts in the regime’s official discourse about the war, the shifts in the discourse about this past during the transition, the role that the Spanish Civil War played during the democratic transition, and the role that this period of the past still plays in contemporary Spain.
political debate” (2008a: 420). As its most immediate consequence, the Pacto de Olvido meant that the desire for peace was prioritized over justice, accountability, truth, and memory in a will to look into the future.6 The Spanish Transition to Democracy was, then,
a transition without transitional justice.7
In the twenty-first century, Spain has experienced an explosion of Civil War memory. The eruption of memory is a phenomenon that Andreas Huyssens has seen as common to Western societies, and always linked to the traumatic events of the twentieth-century – e.g. Second World War or the Holocaust. In his book Present Pasts: Urban
Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory, Huyssens notes that ‘memory’ has emerged as
a key cultural and political concern, as an obsession of monumental proportions (2003: 16). Critical memory cultures today, he argues, are closely linked to “processes of democratization and struggles for human rights” that aim at “expanding and strengthening the public spheres of civil society” by putting an emphasis on human rights, minority and gender issues, in combination with the reassessment of national and international pasts, in order to provide “a welcome impetus for writing history in a new key and thus for guaranteeing a future of memory” (2003: 27). In Spain, the concern with Civil War memory seeks to compensate for the lack of institutionalized memory of the defeated in the war, which was silenced and repressed both during the dictatorship and the democratic transition. This phenomenon has repeatedly been termed as the movement for the
6 The Pacto de Olvido – or “pact of silence” (Pacto de Silencio) – was legally backed by the passing of a
general Amnesty Law in 1977. This legal document provided amnesty to all perpetrators of crimes of political nature – including those entitling bloodshed – committed prior 1976, as well as it freed the remaining political prisoners and erased their criminal records. At the time, the text would be celebrated as a pact of reconciliation among both sides, and as a way to compensate those defeated in the war and repressed during Francoism. Today, the law is understood as the legal framework that assured impunity to perpetrators of human rights violations committed by the regime, as well as protected them against legal prosecution. Ultimately, the law is seen as a refusal to address the atrocities committed by the regime, as it freed all of those who had been active collaborators of the regime and those that identified with it from the responsibility of their acts. Much recent scholarly literature criticizes the memory politics of the democratic transition and analyses its shortages. See, for instance: Juliá (1999, 2003, 2006), Rodrigo (2006), Aguilar Fernández (2002, 2008a, 2008b), Humlebaek (2010), Aguilar Fernández & Humblebaek (2002), Golob (2008), Loureiro (2008), Encarnación (2008, 2014).
7 Transitional justice is, as defined by Alex Boraine in the article “Transitional Justice: A Holistic
Interpretation,” a search for a just society after the experience of undemocratic, in most cases oppressive and even violent regimes, that seeks to “confront perpetrators, address the needs of victims, and assist in the start of a process of reconciliation and transformation” (2006: 18). It builds upon five pillars: accountability, truth recovery, reconciliation, institutional reform, and reparations. In short, transitional justice advocates for the rejection of impunity, confrontation with the past, prioritization of state accountability, and for the total inclusion of the victims of the past regime in the new system. For a more comprehensive explanation of the transitional justice movement, see International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), an international non-profit organization that works in the field of transitional justice worldwide. https://www.ictj.org (retrieved 22 November 2016). For a comprehensive study of the lack of transitional justice in Spain, see Golob (2008) and Encarnación (2008, 2014).
“recovery of historical memory”, a moral, cultural, social and political claim for the recuperation of the memory of the Republican side.8
This phenomenon has echoed in scholarly and cultural productions, civil society, and in Spanish politics. Individuals, activist groups, and politicians have denounced the Republic’s historical deletion during the regime. They work to create a narrative opposed to the regime’s version of the past, a narrative that is also very critical towards the culture of consensus and agreement of the democratic transition. Ultimately, they vindicate the social marginality of the victim, and direct their actions towards the inclusion of previously silenced stories. They are also going beyond the scope of the Transition and carrying out exercises of ‘post-transitional justice’ (Aguilar Fernández, 2008a, 2008b).9 A great number of academic studies have, since the turn of the century, been preoccupied with the recovery of the historical memory of the Republican side and study the Civil War era through the lens of ‘memory’.10 Cultural productions have also seen this transformation. Novels, films, documentaries, etc. are now centred on individual victims and seek to make visible stories that had previously been absent from the public sphere.11 In these productions, emotions and affect become important elements, taking over the previous preoccupation with politics (Stafford, 2015: 6-7).12 The demands from
8 Some scholars find this terminology problematic. In her article “The Politics of Memory in Contemporary
Spain,” Jo Labanyi argues that the terms “recuperation” or “recovery” of historical memory wrongly suggest that the “memory of the past is buried in some kind of time-capsule”, awaiting to be rescued and brought up into the surface again. The author advocates for a reading of the phrase in which “recovery” or “recuperation” of the historical memory stand for an attempt to reactivate the “demands for transitional justice that were sidelined at the time [of the transition to democracy]” (2008: 122). For other interpretations and valuations of the term, see Rodrigo (2006), Loureiro (2008) and Estrada (2013).
9 In this regard, political scientist and legal scholar Stephanie R. Golob argues in her article “Volver: The
Return of/to Transitional Justice Politics in Spain” that Spain, now a consolidated democracy, is a pioneer in pursuing justice after, and apart from, the moment of the transition itself, moving from ‘transitional justice culture’ to ‘transitional justice politics’ because of the efforts of these different agents (2008: 128).
10 See, for instance, Santos Juliá (1999, 2003, 2006), Aguilar Fernández (2002, 2008a, 2008b), Rodrigo
(2006), Labanyi (ed.) (2008), Hepworth (2014, 2015), Humlebaek (2010), Shevel (2011) to name but a few.
11 Some examples of literary fiction are: Soldados de Salamina (Javier Cercas, 2001); La voz dormida
(Dulce Chacón, 2002) and Antonio Muñoz Molina’s La noche de los tiempos (2009). For an extensive commented bibliography of literature about the Civil War, see Bertrand de Muñoz (2007). As for films, some examples are the internationally acclaimed El Laberinto del Fauno (Guillermo del Toro, 2006) or
Las trece rosas (Emilio Martínez-Lázaro, 2007). See Sánchez-Biosca’s studies on filmic productions about
the Civil War and Francoism (2005, 2006). See also Moral (2012). A great number of documentaries have also studied the period from the perspective of memory and strive for the recovery of the Republican memory. See Jaime Camino’s La vieja memoria (1979) or Los niños de Rusia (2002). El sueño derrotado (Jaume and Daniel Serra, 2002), or Daniel Serra’s La guerra cotidiana (2002) are also good examples to illustrate this transformation. More recent productions are Haciendo memoria (Sandra Ruesga, 2005),) or
Pepe el andaluz (Alejandro Alvarado y Concha Barquero, 2012). For an in-depth study of recent
documentaries about the period see Quílez (2013, 2014), Estrada (2013), and Coronado Ruíz (2016).
12 In her book Narrating War in Peace: The Spanish Civil War in the Transition and Today, Katherine O.
the side of civil society materialized in citizen groups that pushed forward a post-transitional justice agenda (Golob, 2008: 113). In 2000, Emilio Silva founded the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH – Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica), an organization that has as its mission the identification and exhumation of Civil War mass graves throughout Spain, with the aim of breaking the silence surrounding the fate of thousands of civilians killed during the war and the Franco regime.13
These actions further instigated the comeback of the delicate past into the public sphere, and aimed at giving voice to previously silenced stories of repression. In the political sphere, the beginning of the post-transitional justice actions is marked by Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s first term in power in front of the PSOE in 2004 (Partido Socialista Obrero Español – Spanish Socialist Workers Party). This government established 2006 as the “Year of Historical Memory”, and the year after presented in congress the so-called ‘Law of Historical Memory’ (Ley de Memoria Histórica). The purpose of this legal document was, as stated in Article 1:
To recognize and expand the rights of those who suffered the prosecution or violence of the Civil War and the Dictatorship, for political or ideological reasons; to promote the recovery of personal and family memory; and to adopt measures destined to suppress 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. (BOE 27 December 2007, Ley 52/2007)14
The document also signalises the state as a provider of economic aid for finding, identifying, and exhuming Civil War mass graves, as well as it deals with Francoist
about the war in and surrounding these spaces: A movement from hero to victim, from ideology to affect, and from trauma to identification through connection with the past (2015: 1). These shifts, she defends, are common to most cultural productions from the new millenium.
13 It is estimated that more than 200.000 men and women were killed in extrajudicial executions during the
war, and that more than 20.000 Republicans were killed by the regime in the post-war years. See ARMH’s website for a comprehensive explanation of their work: http://memoriahistorica.org.es (retrieved 20 March 2017).
14 In Spanish “Ley 52/2007 por la que se reconocen y amplían derechos y se establecen medidas a favor de
quienes padecieron persecución o violencia durante la guerra civil y la dictadura.” The document is
available at:
http://www.mjusticia.gob.es/cs/Satellite/Portal/1292338919019?blobheader=application%2Fpdf&blobhea
dername1=Content-Disposition&blobheadervalue1=attachment%3B+filename%3DLey_de_la_Memoria_Historica_(Ley_52 _2007_de_26_de_Diciembre).PDF (retrieved 22 November 2016)
material heritage – the removal of symbols, statues and plaques from public spaces. It also devotes a whole clause to Franco’s mausoleum, El Valle de los Caídos, which will be further studied in Chapter 1. In general terms, the law intended to recover the memory of those who suffered repression under the fratricidal conflict and the following dictatorship, previously condemned to institutional oblivion, and condemned the Francoist regime as illegitimate. The law was passed in congress with the clear opposition of the right-wing PP (Partido Popular – Popular Party),15 and in words of Omar G. Encarnación, it “unleashed a civil war of its own” (2008: 437).16 The two main party attitudes towards the legal document had much to do with the former division of winners and losers of the civil war, as well as it had a lot to say about the way each political group understood this dramatic past, revealing the lack of consensus among the political elite around the meaning of the war, Francoism and the Transition to Democracy.17 The law was in any case passed, and it was the first time that a document of this category acknowledged the human rights violations that took place under the long dictatorship.
The eruption of memory in the public sphere is intimately linked to the coming of age of a new generation of political leaders, scholars, film-makers, novelists, members of civil society etc. known as the “generation of the grandchildren of the Civil War.” This generation is no longer directly tied to the traumatic past of war, and is also less tied to Francoism than the active actors of the democratic transition: It is formed by the second or third generation of the victims of the war, who did not experience the conflict first hand, and unlike their parents or grandparents, were very young during Francoism as well as during the democratic transition. Temporal distance allows them to look back and reflect on the painful past in different ways, and to break the silence around it.18
15 The Popular Party, initially called Alianza Popular, was created by former members of the Franco regime
and was therefore the political inheritor of the winning side of the Civil War (Humblebaek, 2010: 418). Today, the PP is the biggest right-wing party in Spain and currently the party leading the government.
16 Omar G. Encarnación has studied the traces of this troubled past in the present, with a strong focus on
post-transitional justice. In his article “Reconciliation after Democratization: Coping with the Past in Spain,” he calls Zapatero’s presidency the “Second Transition” (2008). He also argues that Spain constitutes “the most famous case in recent history of a new democracy dealing with a difficult and painful past by choosing not to deal with it at all” (2008, 436), and utilizes the Spanish case to demonstrate that confronting a painful past after a difficult and painful experience is not a precondition for democratization, as democratization can actually occur without reconciliation.
17 The PP defends that the Civil War was an act of collective madness, and that the transition helped Spain
to move forward into the future. They also defend that Spain should not look back. The PSOE defends that the Franco regime should be publicly condemned, and that the transition was incomplete because the defeated never had the chance to mourn their victims.
18 Mariane Hirsch coined the term “postmemory” to refer to the responses of the second and third generation
descendants of Holocaust survivors to the difficulty of erasing the legacy of traumatic memories, even with generational distance. In the article “The Generation of Postmemory,” Hirsch defines “postmemory” as a structure of “inter – and trans – generational transmission of traumatic knowledge and experience” (2008:
These different actors ultimately advocate for a re-examination of the past, contesting the previous Francoist narrative about it, by means of incorporating the experiences of the defeated Republicans into the common understanding of the war and Francoism. In spite of their efforts, this understanding of the past has not fully been incorporated everywhere, and this is mirrored in the three state-run heritage sites that this master thesis analyses. The Valle de los Caídos still offers static and exclusive narratives in which the experiences and memories of the defeated have not been included. The Army Museum in Toledo moves forward, and offers a more even-handed representation. The Reina Sofía museum has fully evolved parallel to the demands for the recovery of the historical memory, and includes previously silenced stories in the presentation of its permanent collection.
I have chosen to analyse these particular cultural institutions for a number of reasons. First, because all of them have maintained visibility and consequence in the war, Francoism, the democratic transition, and today – the buildings in the first two cases and artworks in the third, particularly Picasso’s Guernica. Secondly, because they are either intimately linked to the war and Francoism, or have objects in their collections that deal with the period. Thirdly, because they are the only three institutions of this kind that offer visitors a narrative about this period of the past. Finally, because the three of them are ultimately under the authority of the Spanish state, but each present a different narrative about the past. These differences serve to perfectly illustrate the contested nature of the history of the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship, and mirror much of the country’s relation to this troubled past. In this study, it is important to consider whose memories and stories are represented at these three sites and how, as well as whose experiences have been marginalized and neglected.
Chapter 1, “Static Narratives: Franco’s Version of the Past at the Valle de los Caídos,” studies Franco’s mausoleum and the narrative of ‘crusade’ offered at the site. It will be demonstrated that the way in which the monumental complex has been managed since the end of Francoism has served to perpetuate the exclusive character of the memorial, in which Republican stories and memories continue to be unacknowledged.
106). The generation of Postmemory ‘remembers’ only by means of representation, projection and creation. The term coined by Hirsch proves to be accurate and appropriate when examining the permanence of the traumatic past throughout generations in the Spanish case, as the so-called ‘generation of the grandchildren’ is recovering the past through the generational distance that is between them and the historical events they are representing.
Chapter 2, “Lost Opportunities: The Museo del Ejército in Toledo’s Alcázar,” examines the importance of the building for Francoist mythology and how this symbolic meaning has not been mitigated. It also examines the narrative offered in the new Museo del Ejército, where a section of the permanent collection is devoted to the Civil War. In spite of a clear willingness to present a more inclusive narrative about the past, this transformation has contributed to the maintenance of the building as a Francoist site of memory, in addition to adding another layer of symbolic meaning precisely because it hosts this particular collection, which serves to perpetuate the messages so deeply rooted during the dictatorship rather than to incorporate new, and more democratic values.
Chapter 3, “Republican Stories at the Reina Sofía Museum,” examines the latest changes in the museum’s permanent collection and the effects they have had for the narrative created about this contested history. An analysis of the rooms in which this past is presented will also reveal that this institution now constitutes a site of memory in itself, one in which previously silenced stories can be remembered by the dialogues established between visitors and the pieces on display.
Chapter 1. Static Narratives: Franco’s Version of the Past at the Valle
de los Caídos
At the end of the war in 1939, the regime made a big effort to erase the physical and material traces of the Republic, changing street names, removing symbols and statues, and replacing them with a whole new range of emblems that would conform the Francoist idiosyncrasy. From changing street names honouring big figures of the regime, to the placement of commemorative plaques in virtually every town in the country, accompanied by lists of names of the Francoist fallen in the conflict – always excluding the names of the deceased from the Republican side – and the construction of monuments and memorials in every major city, the public spaces were now filled with symbols that would serve as a legitimation tool for the regime. Dacia Viejo-Rose has brilliantly examined the role of cultural heritage in post-civil war reconstruction in her book
Reconstructing Spain: Cultural Heritage and Memory after Civil War, where she defends
that the physical rebuilding carried out in the post-war years was at all times accompanied by conceptual and ideological processes of re-visioning and redefining the nation (2011: 65). The appropriation or creation of this material heritage was thus a way to shape the collective identity and memory of the country, as it contributed to the construction of the new state’s mythology and narrative about the past. In addition, these signs were in most cases constructed to maintain the divisions brought by the war, as they were “omnipresent reminders” of a past that was not to ever be forgotten (Viejo-Rose, 2011: 79). Of these Francoist material legacy, the most visible and notorious one is, without any doubt, the Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen).
The Valle de los Caídos (Basílica Menor de la Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos as its official name) is the biggest monumental memorial in Spain, and one of the most contested heritage sites in the country. As the name indicates, the monumental complex was built to commemorate the fallen of the war. But…whose fallen? The concept of ‘dissonant heritage’ coined by John Tunbridge and Gregory Ashworth proves extremely fruitful for the analysis of this contested heritage site. In their book from 1996, Dissonant
Heritage: The Management of the Past as a Source of Conflict, the authors speak of
‘dissonant heritage’ to refer to sites in which different groups of society assign different meanings and stories, and that cause disquiet, anxiety and even alienation (20). Sites of this kind, and particularly those associated with violence, raise different emotions that vary from repugnance to empathy or even fascination, what becomes clear for the Valle
de los Caídos and the contemporary debates about its future. The dissonance of the Valle resides in that today, it is seen by many as the most obvious symbol of the regime – not only figuratively, as the remains of the dictator are still buried on the site, but also literally as the monument is visible from approximately fifty kilometres away – and there is a wish among many sectors of society to transform the site into a space in which not only the insurrectionists fallen are celebrated, but also those who fought for the Republican cause, and thus to discharge the site’s symbolic meaning and imbed it with more inclusive and democratic values. Sharon Macdonald’s concept of ‘undesirable heritage’ is also relevant to this analysis, as many parallelisms can be drawn between the Nazi heritage she studies in the article “Undesirable Heritage: Fascist Material Culture and Historical Consciousness in Nuremberg” and the Valley of the Fallen. ‘Undesirable heritage’ constitutes a subcategory of the ‘dissonant heritage’ discussed above, and refers to the physical remains of the past that suggest an identity from which, in the present, many wish to distance themselves from, even if that past and its physical traces are recognised as part of their history. Sites of this kind also raise questions on whether or not this heritage should be destroyed or altered “in order to obliterate an ugly past or to try to shape changing identities” (2006: 11). This is particularly relevant for the Valle in regard to the management of the site and the debates generated about it.
Located at the valley of Cuelgamuros, North-west of Madrid, the monument was conceived by Francisco Franco himself to be the burial place for the insurrectionists fallen in the war, and the commemoration site for celebrating the victory over the Republic, thus for the glorification of Franco’s ‘Crusade’.19 In her article “Site of Memory and Dismemory: The Valley of the Fallen in Spain,” Andrea Hepworth explores the duality of the Valle as a site of memory for the victors, and a site of dismemory for the vanquished. The author notes how the building of the complex was to affirm the regime’s political authority by referring back to its ‘glorious past’, that is, to the victory in the war
19 During Francoism, the war was understood and narrated as a struggle between “good” and “evil”, and
rendered as an inevitable confrontation between two opposed and irreconcilable sides. Franco’s insurrectionists were depicted as the “saviours” that rescued Spain from the chaos created by the Republic, and the Republicans were depicted as “godless”, “traitors” to Spain. This struggle between two opposed forces would be referred to as “The Crusade,” and the insurrection as “The Glorious uprising.” The result of such representation and division between good and evil was based on an inferior and denigrating representation of the Republicans, in which he or she was not only deemed as essentially evil, but also as an entity alien to Spain. This narrative was consolidated during the long dictatorship, and this discourse would come to represent the dominant memory – although not the hegemonic memory – of the war. The regime’s total monopoly over information bodies generated a series of values and historical myths that, even though were not accepted by all sections of society, “did have a considerable influence on the perception of many of its members” (Aguilar Fernández, 2002: 29-30).
(2014: 469). The Valle de los Caídos was devised as an identity-building project, and was indeed used as a tool for the regime’s political legitimization: A symbol of grandeur designed to be an ever-lasting material heritage with a clear pretension of continuity in time, devoted to the memory of the victors.
The monumental group was designed by the architects Pedro Muguruza and Diego Méndez, and is constituted by various constructions whose size reveal the pharaonic nature of the project. The monumental group is conformed by a monastery, in which Benedictine monks still reside; a cemetery, in which an estimated number of 34.000 people are buried in communal unmarked graves, together with the only two marked graves found in the site, those of Francisco Franco himself and José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the ultra-catholic-fascist party Falange; a subterranean basilica, with length of 262 meters, excavated into the mountain in which the monument is erected and in which service is celebrated daily, and a 150 meters-high cross on top of the construction, dominating the whole valley (Figure 1.1). The site was primarily envisioned to be the burial place for the Francoist fallen, for the ‘heroes and martyrs’ of the ‘Crusade.’ However, by the time of the inauguration in 1959, there were not enough bodies to fill the immense space, and physical remains from the side of the defeated were unearthed from communal graves around the country and transferred to the Valle without the consent, or even without the knowledge of their relatives. These bodies were re-buried on the site and remained anonymous.20 The constructions were carried out with the help of forced labour, mainly Republican prisoners – war prisoners and later on political prisoners persecuted by the regime – and lasted for almost two decades, from 1940 to 1958.21 The monument would be inaugurated on April 1 of the following year,
anniversary of the Francoist victory in the war.
The location at the valley of Cuelgamuros is not arbitrary. The monument is erected in the municipality of San Lorenzo del Escorial, a few kilometres away from the
20 In his study of the construction history of the Valle entitled “Valle de los Caídos: A monument to Defy
Time and Oblivion,” Álex Bueno argues that the communal interment of both victors and vanquished served to present an illusory unity and reconciliation, but in reality did nothing but highlighting the disunity (2013: 99).
21 The number of political prisoners that worked on the site is still unknown, but believed to range from
14.000 to 20.000. Many of them died as a result of explosions, falling rocks and silicosis while working on the site (Viejo-Rose, 2011: 85). This is one of the points of contention, as today’s defenders of the Valle call in question not only the number of prisoners, but also the terminology ‘forced labour,’ defending that the workers at Cuelgamuros were either hired construction workers or ‘common’ prisoners, thus not addressing the political nature of their imprisonment. For an in-depth historical contextualization see Hepworth (2014), González-Ruibal (2009) or Hite (2011). For an analysis of the use of political prisoners on the site, see Bueno (2013).
Monastery of San Lorenzo del Escorial, constructed by King Philip II in the sixteenth-century as a symbol of power, and mausoleum of the Spanish Royal Family since its construction (Figure 1.2). Franco, in placing the memorial so close to El Escorial, intended to create a link with Spain’s imperial past. The Valle de los Caídos – as much as the architecture built under the regime – is constructed in a style that follows that of the monastery in El Escorial.22 This kind of architecture was considered by the regime the “most Spanish.”23 Viejo-Rose notes how by means of constructing material heritage like this one, the regime aimed at constructing a New Spain while at the same time restoring Old Spain – Imperial Spain – to its former glory (2011: 68). The choice of style also served to imbed the new construction with a ready-made antiquity (Macdonald, 2006: 15) that would draw parallelisms with “Spain’s glorious past,” and aimed at creating a continuity between that past and the regime itself, working as the missing link of an old chain. As in the case of the Nazi Party rally grounds in Nuremberg studied by Macdonald, the minds behind the monumental complex “clearly held views about the symbolic potency of architecture and the possibility of constructing a ‘heritage’ that would allude to the past and was intended to last into the distant future” (2006: 16). The founding decree of the monumental complex is revealing in this sense, and at the same time it unveils to whom the monument is dedicated and lays out the discourse of ‘crusade’ that is present in the whole construction:
The size of our Crusade, the heroic sacrifices that the victory entailed, and the transcendence this epic has had for the future of Spain, cannot be perpetuated by modest monuments, like those in towns and cities to commemorate the salient events of our history and the glorious episodes of its sons.
It is necessary that the stones here erected have the grandeur of ancient monuments, that they defy time and oblivion and that they constitute a place for meditation and repose in which future generations can pay tribute and admire those who bequeathed to them a better Spain.
To these ends responds the selection of a quiet and remote place in which to erect the grandiose temple of our dead so that, for centuries on end, we can pray for those who fell in
22 This kind of architecture is called neo-Herrerian as it copies the aesthetics created by Juan de Herrera,
architect of the sixteenth-century monastery.
23 In their study of touristic guides produced by Patrimonio Nacional (National Heritage) between 1959 and
1987, “Las imágenes de España, de Franco y de la monarquía en las guías turísticas de Patrimonio Nacional (1959-1987),” Kristine Vanden Berghe and Bart Maddens have noted how the Valle de los Caídos is always mentioned in relation to the neighbouring monastery, and Franco himself implicitly presented as a contemporary Philip II, almost as the continuation of the Habsburg dynasty (2008: 254-257).
God’s and the Fatherland’s path. Perennial site of peregrination in which nature’s grandeur will provide a worthy setting for the repose of the heroes and martyrs of the Crusade. (BOE 01 April 1940) 24
The document, signed by Francisco Franco himself, is already laying the foundations for the discourse that later on would be constructed through the physical characteristics of the monumental complex, its architecture and its decorative arts.
Franco’s ‘Crusade’ at The Valle de los Caídos
When visiting the site, probably the most striking thing is the lack of information. The Valle de los Caídos is completely decontextualized. There is no verbal information available to visitors on how the site was constructed – the involvement of political prisoners – nor on the context that gives reason to the monumental complex, the dictatorship, or Francisco Franco himself.25 This is particularly remarkable if taken into consideration that the site is managed by Patrimonio Nacional (National Heritage), the state-run agency that is in charge of the state’s heritage linked to the Spanish royal family as well as monasteries and religious temples founded by the kings and queens of the country (Patrimonio Nacional, 2014). 26 For this reason, some contextualization would be
expected, as it occurs in any other of the sites managed by this agency. Patrimonio Nacional is in charge of the maintenance and conservation of the site, as well as it manages the visits to the area. The exterior of the monument is controlled by this agency,
24 To see the whole inaugural decree: BOE 01 Abril 1940
http://www.memoriahistorica.gob.es/es-es/vallecaidos/Documents/Decreto141940ordenaconstruccionMonumento.pdf (retrieved 15 December 2016)
25 It is a common practice to look for information before visiting a site. This is normally done through the
website of the place that is about to be visited. In the case of the Valle, the information provided by its two official online sites is un-nuance and incomplete. Patrimonio Nacional’s website (National Heritage) provides information on the architects and artists who participated in its construction, as well as it mentions that Francisco Franco and Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera are buried on the site, together with 33.847 others perished in the Civil War. However, the context in which the memorial was erected is nowhere to be found, as well as there is no mention to the way in which the site was constructed. (See Patrimonio Nacional: Abadía Benedictina de la Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos: http://www.patrimonionacional.es/abadia-benedictina-de-la-santa-cruz-del-valle-de-los-caidos (retrieved 7 December 2016). On the other official website, managed by the Benedictine monks that reside in the complex, it is emphasized that the Valle was constructed as a place for reconciliation, and there is no explanation about the war, the dictatorship, or Franco. (See: http://www.valledeloscaidos.es/monumento/objetivo retrieved 15 December 2016).
26 In this regard, it is also striking that the Valle de los Caídos falls into the category of heritage linked to
the Spanish crown, as it was not a member of the Royal family who founded it. The fact that Patrimonio Nacional is the managing agency of the monumental complex serves to bring the regime into line with the Spanish monarchy, and by doing this ultimately placing the regime at the same level. Moreover, in years past, the agency offered combined tickets for visiting both the Monastery and the memorial, a coupling yet again full of symbolic significance.
but the inside is subject to canonical law, as it is a religious temple. However, the governmental agency has the authority to manage the rest of the complex freely, and therefore it is striking that the site is not duly contextualized. Because of the lack of formal contextualization, the narrative in the monumental complex is constructed by the objects and the architectonical characteristics of the site, and never complemented by verbal texts. The objects and the architecture, then, construct the site’s narrative.
It is an uncomfortable visit. The valley in which the monumental complex is located governs the mountains of Madrid, offering an extraordinary view, and the landscape evokes feelings of tranquillity and quietness. However, the outside of the monument, as well as the interior of the basilica, give the opposite impression. The exterior of the memorial still maintains Francoist symbols as it did on its inauguration day, including Francoist escutcheons engraved on both sides of the main entrance (Figure 1.3). Yet again, no information is given on what these escutcheons, signature of the regime, stand for. The gates to the basilica are topped by an enormous Pietà by Juan de Ávalos – six meters tall and sixteen meters wide. This piece, ultimately representing the pain of a mother who has lost her child, is far from transmitting the feelings of love and loss that Michelangelo so gracefully achieved in his homonymous sculpture. The piece by Ávalos, with its monumental proportions, rather conveys fear and sorrow, with a Virgin whose face is completely covered and that imposingly guards the entrance to the temple (Figure 1.4). The sculpture is also representative of the gender ideals of the regime: women were given the exclusive role of mourning mothers, wives, daughters, sisters of the fallen in the conflict.27 This monumental sculpture and the cold, sober exterior of the complex set the tone for the rest of the visit.
After going through the gates, visitors are obliged to pass a security check. The site’s gift shop appears then on one side. In there, visitors can purchase souvenirs spanning from miniatures copying the Valle, to t-shirts, magnets and cups decorated with imprints of the construction. Not a single book dedicated to the history of the Valle’s construction can be found on the shop, what further contributes to the de-contextualization of the site
27 In the monument, the only female presence are different representations of the Virgin Mary, and therefore
there’s no acknowledgment of the active role that many women played in the war. Viejo-Rose argues that the entire memorial panorama in Spain contributed to the propagation of gendered messages in which women were ascribed with the role described above. She further notes how women are excluded from all the commemorative plaques to the ‘glorious fallen for Spain,’ present in practically every town, with the consequence of ascribing women to different self-sacrificing roles “of nursing the wounded, tending to orphaned children, ‘righting’ wayward women, and mourning the fallen” (2011: 66), and thus denying their active participation in the conflict.
and impedes visitors from learning about the significance of the complex for the regime. After this, visitors can proceed to another set of gates that give entrance to the basilica per se. Some of the decorative arts inside the temple are the only aspects that are accompanied by an information panel. In these texts, there’s a brief mention to the artists as well as to what the artworks are representing, but they are simple presentations of the pieces of art, and there is no explanation on their symbolic meaning or significance.
Once the doors have been crossed, visitors are confronted with two impressive and frightening armed archangels that precede the nave of the temple. As a visitor, it is hard to feel welcomed into the dark and cold monument, being received by such monumental pieces. These two sculptures mark the first encounter with the narrative exposed in the site and remind us that the Valley is not only a religious temple, but a place in which an armed conflict is being celebrated and remembered. They are also the first indicators of the crusade-like discourse that is further developed in the interior of the temple, as they are part of the imagery that combines war and religion, swords and crosses, at all times referring to the Francoist ‘crusade’ fought against the Republic (Figure 1.5).
The body of the nave contains six side chapels that are related to the military. In her book from 2011, Politics and the Art of Commemoration, Katherine Hite carries out an in-depth analysis of the symbolic meaning of these chapels (115-16). Drawing on her analysis, the chapels are devoted to different representations of the Virgin, four of them patrons of the branches of the Army: ‘La Inmaculada Concepción’ (Immaculate Conception), patron saint of the Army; ‘Nuestra Señora del Carmen’ (Our Lady of Carmen), of the Navy; ‘Nuestra Señora de Loreto’ (Our Lady of Loreto), patron saint of the Air Force, and ‘Virgen de la Merced’ (Virgin of Mercy), patron saint of captives, which according to the author symbolises the prisoners whose lives were spared by the Francoist (115). Another chapel is devoted to ‘Nuestra Señora del Pilar’ (Our Lady of Pilar), yet another connotation to the armed conflict as this is the patron saint of the Ebro region in northern Spain, where the last battle of the war took place. A sixth chapel is dedicated to ‘Nuestra Señora de África’ (Our Lady of Africa), a clear allusion to the fact that the military insurrection was launched from the African continent (Hite, 2011: 116; see also Bueno, 2013: 86). In addition to these chapels, the body of the nave is decorated with eight monumental tapestries, Apocalypse Tapestries, commissioned by Philip II to Belgian artist Willem Pannemaker in the sixteenth-century. The tapestries illustrate St. John’s Book of Revelations, and they ultimately speak of the triumph of Christ and the church over the devil by means of the apocalyptic visions narrated in the book – St. John
on Patmos; The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; The Adoration of the Lamb; St. John Ordered to Measure the Temple; St. Michael Overcoming Satan; The Angel Bearing the Gospel; The Marriage of the Lamb; and the last one, placed at the end of the nave: The Angel Overcoming the Dragon, in which God’s Army finally defeats the infernal forces.28
The tapestries are therefore a clear allusion to the war and to the understanding of it as a ‘crusade’ fought against infernal enemies. God’s army, embodied in the winners, and the devil, embodied in the vanquished. The use of this tapestries is also a clear attempt to link Francoism to the Habsburg past and to associate Franco’s figure to the sixteenth-century monarch, as discussed above. The allusion to the Francoist ‘crusade’ is more symbolic and metaphorical than it is literal, but the hanging of these particular tapestries juxtaposed with the chapels, undoubtedly refers to the conflict. The combination of the two create a powerful narrative of war and victory (Figure 1.6).29
The nave is additionally decorated with a number of statues depicting angels and saints, always armed and in a militant posture. All these symbolically loaded decorative arts direct visitors to the transept of the temple and its central point, the altar, toped with an enormous wooden cross. Four tremendous bronze archangels are placed on each side of the altar, surrounding the presbytery. These figures are hooded and armed, and look down on the visitors from their pedestals, as if they were guarding the altar, contributing to making it hard to perceive the site as welcoming and inclusionary. The transept of the temple is covered by an enormous cupola, decorated with a mosaic in which the conjunction of church and army can be further observed. The mosaic by Santiago Padrós depicts God in the middle, surrounded by angels and presiding a procession of more than a hundred figures. In here, all the insurrectionists forces – Falangists, Carlists, and officers from the Army, each recognisable by their uniforms and flags – are accompanied by different representations of the church – personified in the Pope, priests, monks and nuns – saints, flying angels and the Virgin Mary. This representation in which the church and the army are so intimately linked is a way of showing the relationship between Francoism and the Catholic church – and it also ultimately alludes to the idea that it was the winners who had ‘God on their side’. All the decorative arts in the temple are thus a clear allusion
28 For an art-historical analysis of the tapestries and their significance for the Spanish Crown in times of
the Habsburg monarchs, see Domínguez Ortiz, Herrero Carretero and Godoy (1991).
29 A more direct reference can be found in the temple’s choir, in which images of heroes and martyrs of the
crusades were carved out in the wood. The choir is however closed for visitors and this direct allusion to the crusades goes unnoticed.
to the Francoist victory in the conflict, always maintaining the dichotomy of good and evil.
Francisco Franco and Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera are buried under this mosaic, on the back and the front of the altar, respectively. As a visitor, it is rather striking to see that both graves always have fresh flowers on top of them, considering that flowers are an indication that these two tombs are being paid a tribute. On each side of the transept there are two crypts in which the fallen soldiers are interred. The doors to both crypts contain the following message: “Caídos por Dios y por la Patria” (Fallen for God and the Fatherland). Yet again… whose fallen? In spite of the interment of Republican bodies on the site, the narrative created by the physical characteristics of the construction clearly marks who is to be mourned and remembered at the Valle. As González-Ruibal writes in his essay entitled “Topography of Terror or Cultural Heritage? The Monuments of Franco’s Spain,” leaving aside that Franco himself is buried at the site and that there is absolutely no representation of the Republicans, “everything about this memorial was conceived to exalt Franco’s rule and the national-catholic principles in which the regime was based” (2009: 66). An acknowledgment of the Republican fallen is nowhere to be found, and the narrative derived from the construction is far from speaking a reconciliatory message. It rather serves to maintain the division between victors and vanquished as it glorifies the Francoist victory over the Republic, and is clearly directed towards the memory of the winners in the conflict.
The death of Francisco Franco and the establishment of a democratic government brought little change to the Valle. Even though over forty years have passed since the death of the dictator, the site that was constructed for his personal and his regime’s exaltation is still speaking that same message.30
The Valle de los Caídos Today
The Valle de los Caídos and its future remain to this day subject of heated debates. To some, it is the symbol of an ideology they defend and of a past to which they feel
30 In her essay “Sites of Memory / Sites of Oblivion in Contemporary Spain,” M. Cinta Ramblado-Minero
studies the strategies of re-appropriation of the material legacy of Francoism. The author notes how most sites of Francoist repression like prisons, detention centres, force labour camps, concentration camps or sites of massive executions were de-codified during Francoism and after the death of the dictator by either erasing such traces or by giving them a new use, thus juxtaposing “successive layers of meaning” (2011: 33). Indeed, some of the material legacy of the regime has been re-named, re-appropriated or recovered through time, but not the Valle de los Caídos.
connected and related to. Current defendants of the monumental complex argue that the Valle intended to serve as some sort of reconciliation, being dedicated to all the fallen in the conflict, both the vanquished and the victors, and defend that the monumental complex should be maintained as it is.31 To others, it symbolises Franco and his
long-lasting regime, and the Valle serves as a reminder of the atrocities committed under the dictatorship. Relatives of Republicans killed during the war and its aftermath have repeatedly expressed their unrest over the fact that the remains of their family members might be anonymously buried in the company of the head of the regime that killed them, in a site that is devoted to the winners of the war. They advocate for a full re-signification of the site. The dissonance of the monumental complex, then, resides in that different sectors of society give the monumental complex different meanings: While it constitutes a clearly defined site of memory for the winners and supporters of the dictatorship, it is a
site of dismemory for the defeated (Hepworth, 2014).
Contemporary discussions on how to deal with this particular site run parallel to the “recovery of historical memory” movement, and are directed towards signalising that the monument still maintains its symbolic significance: it is the symbol of the Franco regime with all its implications – the coup d’état in 1936, the Francoist victory in the war, the dictatorship, Francoism, and Franco himself. In this regard, one of the most controversial issues around the Valle is the proposal to remove Franco’s remains from the site, a petition endorsed by sectors of civil society as well as by associations like the ARMH (Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica), as they argue that this would be the first action needed in order to discharge the site’s symbolic meaning. Some others even advocate for the site’s entire destruction.32
These debates took on a political level with the passing of the socialist’s party so-called ‘Law on Historical Memory’ in 2007. The passing of this law signified the emergence of the monumental complex as a political concern – previously a point of
31 These arguments are based on the fact that both vanquished and victors are buried on the site, but ignore
that the bodies of the Republicans were transferred to the Valley after being unearthed from communal graves, and without the consent or even the knowledge of their relatives. They also disregard what was stated on the founding decree, as well as the characteristics of the monumental group that, as has been demonstrated, far from being inclusive, are clearly devoted to the fallen of only one side, the victors. See, for instance, the Asociación Para la Defensa del Valle de los Caídos (Association for the Defence of the Valley of the Fallen). http://www.elvalledeloscaidos.es/portal/ (retrieved 31 January 2017)
32 See, for instance, eldiario.es, (17 July 2016), “Dinamitar el Valle de los Caídos,”
http://www.eldiario.es/zonacritica/Dinamitar-Valle-Caidos_6_538306169.html (retrieved 31 January 2017). Bueno argues that removing material traces of the past would not necessarily contribute to dealing with that past (2013: 106). Following his consideration, the destruction of the site would be comparable to the rewriting of history that the Francoist regime carried out, denying that the regime ever existed.
