Irish Examiner View: Spain confronting its past offers us a lesson for peace

There were fears that a magnificent basilica had become a place of veneration to Franco and fascism.

A friar walks in front of the Valle de los Caidos on the outskirts of Madrid, Spain. File Picture: Manu Fernandez/AP

Anyone who has ever seen the Valle de Cuelgamuros in the Sierra de Guadarrama near Madrid will have been inspired by the beauty and grandeur of the hugely impressive monument. 

Previously known as the Valle de los Caidos (literally translated as 'The Valley of the Fallen') it was built by the regime of former dictator Francisco Franco, supposedly as a ‘national act of atonement’ and reconciliation in the wake of the country’s brutal civil war.

In reality, the magnificent basilica, hewn out of a granite ridge, and the massive 150m cross above it, was a monument to Franco and his fascist supporters. Indeed, the only two people interred in the basilica were Franco himself and Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of the Falangist Party.

There are said to be 40,000 others buried in the valley, 33,000 of whom were opposition Republican victims of Francoism, most of whom were interred there without the consent or knowledge of their families. The only two marked graves were those of Franco and de Rivera.

However, Franco’s remains were removed in 2019 after a lengthy legal battle and reinterred with those of his wife in a Madrid cemetery. Fears in Spain that the monument had become a place of veneration to Franco and fascism and not ‘all the fallen’ had made it a national prerogative that his remains be moved.

Yesterday, the remains of de Rivera were also exhumed and reinterred elsewhere. 

The Spanish government has said this is further proof of its commitment to confronting the past. Maybe there is a lesson in all of this for Ireland.