In 1977, Spain celebrated its first free general election since the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship that followed, which together lasted over four decades. Despite that this restoration of democracy has become a model for peaceful political transitions, to this day the country still struggles to come to terms with its historical memory.

El Valle de los Caídos (‘The Valley of the Fallen’) might be the most visible and controversial example of this challenge. Commissioned in 1940 by the Head of State and Government of Spain at the time, general and dictator Francisco Franco, the imposing monument was built to honour the “heroes and martyrs” of the civil war that his troops had ultimately won. Together with the eradication of the Second Spanish Republic’s constitution—which had established freedom of speech and association, introduced women’s suffrage, recognized divorce, and deprived the nobility of special privileges—the new regime imposed a Falangist, Catholic, and nationalist culture that found an opportunity to exalt itself in El Valle de los Caídos. “The dimension of our Crusade, the heroic sacrifices involved in the victory and the far-reaching significance that this epic has had for the future of Spain,” Franco stated in 1940, “cannot be perpetuated with the simple monuments with which the outstanding events of our history and the glorious deeds of her sons are often commemorated in towns and villages. The stones that are to be erected must have the grandeur of the monuments of old, which defy time and oblivion.” [1]

Its walls, erected by a workforce that included convicts and political prisoners, enclose tens of thousands of bodies exhumed from mass graves

The site selected for this endeavour was the heart of the Nava cliff in the Sierra Guadarrama. Volumes of granite were removed to excavate a basilica in the rock’s womb and to construct the concrete platform that constitutes its access. Its walls, erected by a workforce that included convicts and political prisoners, enclose tens of thousands of bodies exhumed from mass graves and buried surrounding Franco’s mausoleum, in most cases without the consent of the deceased’s families. A 150-meter tall cross, one of the largest in the world, aligns with the center of the dome under which the dictator’s grave rests, and crowns the architectural complex.

In October 2007, under the government of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) and Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Congress passed The Historical Memory Law. [2] Among other measures, the law recognizes and grants aid to all the victims of political, religious, and ideological violence of the civil war and dictatorship, as well as to their family; mobilizes support for the tracing, identification, and exhumation of missing persons; and condemns the Francoist regime. It also prohibits the celebration of political events at El Valle de los Caídos, which had become a gathering site for extreme right groups. Francoist symbols ornamenting public buildings and spaces were henceforth subject to removal. 

There were, however, exceptions to the law made specifically for spaces of provable artistic and architectural value or with religious significance—both arguments mobilized to obstruct its application in El Valle de los Caídos, leading to a long legal battle. Avoiding the contentious assessment of the value and significance of the architecture, the government turned its focus toward the sanitary and safety conditions of the site. The allegations, supported by reports on structures affected by visible humidity and leaks, prompted the closing of the memorial in 2009. After the electoral victory by the conservative PP (People’s Party) in 2011, and the constitution of a new government led by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, the site reopened to the public. 

Recently, events have begun to unfold more quickly. With four decades having past, in an effort to remove the symbols of Franco’s regime from the Spanish capital—including street names, plaques, and monuments—Madrid’s municipal government, headed by the Mayor Manuela Carmena, created the “Historical Memory Commission.” The renaming of fifty-two streets is currently underway. Similarly, in May 2016, following the actions initiated in October 2008 by Judge Baltasar Garzón, who ordered the exhumation of nineteen mass graves, Judge Jose Manuel Delgado decided in favor of the exhumation of Ramiro and Manuel Lapeña from El Valle de los Caídos. The brothers had been executed by Franco’s forces in 1936 and buried at the fringes of the cemetery in Calatayud, where their bodies had been exhumed, years later, without consent from their relatives, and brought to the mausoleum. Disagreements between the Patrimonio Nacional (the National Heritage Agency), which owns the site, and the community of Benedictine monks who reside in the Santa Cruz abbey, have since delayed the implementation of the court ruling. Declaring that the procedure would affect the stability and integrity of the structure, and claiming jurisdiction over the space they guard, the monks denied access to the workers who had been sent to carry out the court orders. In doing so, they put the law and preservation at odds—and this standoff persists to this day. Architecture is here at the forefront of an ideological and ethical battle.

Architecture is here at the forefront of an ideological and ethical battle.  

El Valle de los Caídos, now one of the most visited monuments in Madrid, is a symbol of the victory of fascism and the failure to recognize all the victims of the civil war, including those subject to repression and political cleansing. To date, tourists continue to photograph its architecture without knowing its significance. Patrimonio Nacional not only explicitly urges silence inside the basilica, but further produces it by disallowing leaflets, plaques, or a much-needed interpretation center. Silence spreads across all the Spanish territory where an appalling amount of the violence inflicted by Franco’s regime is still present: bullet holes in cemetery walls, mass graves yet to be opened, vestiges of concentration camps, courts-martial archives, and other fascist monuments left standing.

The erection, maintenance, and protection of all these walls and the wounds they represent, which are still shattering Spanish society, shed light on the enduring culture supported by Franco’s rule. It found in the discipline of architecture—in its borders, material conditions, aesthetic regimes, and targeted bodies—one of its most potent vehicles for ideological dissemination and naturalization. [3] Despite the numerous proposals for the transformation of El Valle de los Caídos—from the exhumation and relocation of the remains of Franco, to the reconversion of the site as a place for cultural reconciliation, to its demolition—the architectural community remains largely removed from this public debate. [4]  Even if architecture’s expertise is fundamental for the debate around the legacy-in-construction of Franco’s regime, those who voice their ideas and concerns are still relatively few. The work of architect and scholar Josep Quetglas in Mallorca constitutes a reference for the engagement of architects and their particular capacities and expertise in the restoration of the memory of the victims, by building architectures such as the Mur de la Memòria (2011) and the Memorial a los Republicanos (2012), together with Tomàs Bosch and Jaume Mayol, and providing technical expertise in the evaluation and dismantling of fascist monuments as it is the case of the Sa Feixina (1947). Among the members of the Historical Memory Commission sits one architect, Teresa Arenillas Parra. [5] Representatives of the discipline are absent from the Chair of Historical Memory, created in the faculty of History of the Arts at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid. [6] The same was true for La Comisión de Expertos para el Futuro de El Valle de los Caídos (The Commission of Experts for the Future of The Valley of the Fallen), created in 2011. [7]

The discussion about the presence and maintenance of Francoist monuments in a democratic society continues to trigger distress, reticence, or indifference. Nevertheless, in a country that hasn’t registered the rise of populist far-right parties like other European and North American countries, the debate has become part of the contemporary political and cultural milieu, even without a strong involvement of the architecture community. The decision to preserve an architecture whose walls sustain the suffering and invisibility of the victims is now finally being denaturalized and, a year after the court decision, Patrimonio Nacional asserted the civil character of the cemetery at El Valle de los Caídos, triggering the implementation process. The first step is the puncturing of the walls. Upon accessing the crypt, technicians will then evaluate the possibility of exhumation. Following this announcement, the Spanish Congress of Deputies passed a non-binding motion to exhume the remains of Franco out of the mausoleum, which, despite its symbolic value, the government is likely to oppose. [8] Reactions erupted almost immediately, and the Provincial Court of Madrid admitted a complaint for a crime of incitement to hatred presented by the Association for the Defense of El Valle de los Caídos against the comedians and presenters of the TV show El Intermedio, whose hosts had used the monument as a prompt for one of their gags. [9] Meanwhile, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) took the opportunity to remind the government that “the State must urgently address the claims of the victims of the civil war and the Franco’s regime” and indicated the exhumations and the case of El Valle de los Caídos as a priority, as well as the proclamation of the nullity of the arbitrary sentences handed by military courts set up by Franco against citizens during the war and the dictatorship. [10]

The contested architecture of historical memory emerges at the intersection between space, power, and politics. It materializes in structures above- and below-ground, visible and concealed borders, institutional and media spaces, propaganda campaigns, and mechanisms of censorship. The terms of this debate also define the space and possibilities for architectural thinking and action within schools, offices, archives, and operating platforms, permeated by the divergent values and motivations that these architectures serve. This polarization, however, should not induce paralysis. Rather it should be embraced as an opportunity to enable a changing relationship between a particular society and its memories through the recoding of its monuments.

The contested architecture of historical memory emerges at the intersection between space, power, and politics.

The negotiation of a common memory entails the construction of a new symbolic, cultural, political, and legal armature that sustains the architecture—a task that has previously demanded the mediation of the international community. That is the case of the “Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum,” created in 1947 on the site of the Nazi concentration and extermination camp, which serves as a space of memory and research into the Holocaust; or the Srebrenica Genocide Memorial, set up to honor the victims of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide and identified with the support of the International Commission on Missing Persons. When the Spanish State fails to do so, foreign judges, forensic doctors, volunteers, and supporters make possible the exhumation of mass graves and the application of the Historical Memory Law possible.

 The case of El Valle de los Caídos involves not only a technical risk and political challenge, but also a moral conundrum. Previous reports from Patrimonio Nacional claim that leaks have affected the integrity of the walls, causing the merger between the ossuary and the structure of the building, to the point that it is no longer possible to distinguish one from the other. [11] The remains of the victims, according to this account, would therefore be a part of the architecture that celebrates, and perpetuates, their silence. Architecture is here designed to serve a particular political ideology and national identity, and now indeed embodies its legacy of repression.

The transformation of the site is, therefore, an invitation to the architecture community in Spain to scrutinize the foundations and walls that sustain and demarcate its distinctive architectural practice and thought. Entangled within socio-political, technological, and legal regimes, and simultaneously concerned with questions of affection, belonging, and representation, architecture is inevitably a contentious practice, one that demands equal parts creativity, aesthetic and technical expertise, responsibility, and sensitivity. 

In the debate around El Valle de los Caídos, insisting on and making space for the agency of architects in publicly imagining alternatives for the future of the site is a fundamental step toward challenging decades of silence and toward constructing a new architecture for a shared ground and memories that are yet to come. [12]

For more on "The Architecture of Architecture," pick up a copy of Ed #1 here!

1. BOE (BOE Official State Gazette) April 2, 1940. Bulletin nº 93. Pg, 2240, Department: Presidencia del Gobierno. Translated by the author. http://www.boe.es/datos/pdfs/BOE//1940/093/A02240-02240.pdf

2. Historical Memory Law in Spain  (Law 52/2007 December 26, 2007), Ministry of Justice. Translated by the author. http://leymemoria.mjusticia.go...

3.  For an account on the role that the discipline of architecture played in the survival of Franco’s dictatorship, I refer to María González Pendás, Architecture, Technocracy, and Silence: Building Discourse in Franquista Spain (PhD Diss, Columbia University, 2016). For her analysis on the legacies of the regime in contemporary politics and culture see in particular the Introduction, p.31-39.

4. Gloria Rodríguez-Pina, “7 propuestas fallidas sobre qué hacer con los restos de Franco y el Valle de los Caídos,” El País, February 28, 2017, accessed April 15, 2017, http://politica.elpais.com/pol...

5. “Constituido el Comisionado de la Memoria Histórica,” Portal web del Ayuntamiento de Madrid, May 6, 2016. accessed April 20, 2017, http://www.madrid.es/portales/munimadrid/es/Inicio/Actualidad/Noticias/Constituido-el-Comisionado-de-la-Memoria-Historica?vgnextfmt=default&vgnextoid=85a6a1eedf484510VgnVCM1000001d4a900aRCRD&vgnext

6. Cátedra Memoria Histórica del s.XX, Universidad Complutense de Madrid http://pendientedemigracion.ucm.es/info/memorias/equipo.html

7. BOE (BOE Official State Gazette) May 28, 2011. Bulletin nº 127. Pg, 53148 to 53153, Department: Ministerio de la Presidencia, https://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2011/05/28/pdfs/BOE-A-2011-9320.pdf

8. Fernando Garea, “El Congreso aprueba sacar los restos de Franco del Valle de los Caídos,” El País, May 12, 2017, accessed May 12, 2017, http://politica.elpais.com/pol...

9. “La Audiencia de Madrid ordena investigar a Wyoming por un gag sobre el Valle de los Caídos,” El País, April 6, 2017. accessed April 27, 2017: http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2017/04/06/actualidad/1491482255_145467.html

10. “España / Memoria histórica: La fortaleza de la democracia se mide en la capacidad de atender los reclamos de las víctimas,” Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), May 19, 2017, accessed May 20, 2017. Translated by the author. http://www.ohchr.org/SP/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=21641&LangID=S

11. Luis Gómez, “La mayor fosa común de España,” El País, September 21, 2008, accessed April 12, 2017: http://elpais.com/diario/2008/09/21/espana/1221948022_850215.html

12. This essay is part of the long-term project on the debate surrounding the historical memory in Spain, developed together with photographer and filmmaker Guillem Valle. The author acknowledges and thanks Guillem Valle, Ethel Baraona, Cesar Reyes, Francisco Rodríguez, and Felipe Vara de Rey, for the conversations from which this text has originated, as well as Jacob Moore for his copyedits.