Spain: The monument that once housed Franco's mausoleum will soon be remodeled

"The base and the cross, winning project of the International Competition of ideas for the 're-signification' of the Cuelgamuros Valley (...) proposes a new vision of the monumental ensemble" combining "discretion in the landscape, while assuming a clear transformation of the environment", the ministry on X indicates, a few days before the 50th anniversary of Franco's death, on November 20, 1975.

The "Valle de los Caídos" (the "valley of the fallen"), renamed "Valle de Cuelgamuros" by the left-wing government, remains a place of pilgrimage for those nostalgic for Francoism.

In order to prevent this place from remaining a place of remembrance, the government of Pedro Sánchez had launched this anonymous architectural competition "to conceptually modify the affective dimension" of the place.

Since taking office in 2018, the Socialist Prime Minister has strived to rehabilitate the memory of the victims of the Civil War and Francoism. To this end, in 2022 he passed a law known as the "Democratic Memory Law," which honors the victims of the dictatorship and encourages local authorities to remove symbols of the Franco regime.

The site of the former Valley of the Fallen is home to a basilica erected on Franco's orders, 50 kilometers from Madrid. His body lay there until its exhumation in 2019.

In the basilica, crowned by a 150-meter-high cross visible for miles around, lie some 33.000 combatants who belonged to both sides of the Civil War: the Francoists and the Republicans. Among the latter, the bodies of many were brought there without their families even being informed.

Franco's remains occupied a privileged place in the altar of the basilica where he died until October 2019, when Pedro Sánchez's government transferred them to a cemetery in the suburbs of Madrid.

In April 2023, the remains of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falange, a fascist party that was one of the pillars of the Franco regime, were also exhumed and transferred to a civilian cemetery.