El Escorial and the Valle de los Caidos

Saturday I went to El Escorial with the BC group. It was the last trip that I’ll take with that group and it a good one. There was not much to see at el Escorial besides the giant monastery thing. Ana brought us some food, drinks, and desert and after we finished touring the building we had a nice picnic in a field.

After lunch we went to the Valle de los Caidos. This the more worthwhile part of the excursion because after a while monasteries and cathedrals and all that start to blend together, but this was the first enormous fascist monument I have ever seen and it definitely stood out as something unique.

The ominous gray clouds that filled the sky were very fitting for the apocalyptic feel that the monument gives off. It consists of a 152.4 meter tall cross with gigantic figures of the four evangelists and their tetramorphs perched on the base. From above them, allegories of prudence, justice, strength, and temperance, the cardinal virtues, stare forebodingly down at the visitors.

The cross towers over a cavernous basilica, larger than Saint Peter’s in Rome, that was chiseled into the side of the granite mountain. Upon entering one is welcomed by two blind angels, then passes by a wall of saints featuring Saint John the Moor Killer in the center, and proceeds down a long hall lined with tapestries that depict the scenes of the apocalypse.

On either side of the altar, are the tombs of Francisco Franco and Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera (the guy who created the falange, a fascist nationalist party) both of whom died on November 20^th. And in a room to the left there is a crypt containing the bodies of soldiers who died during the Spanish Civil War.

My first thought was a practical one. It is located at the top of a bald-peaked mountain in the Sierra de Guadarama, which is basically the middle of nowhere, 58 km from Madrid, where all you can see from the top is the little highway below, and miles and miles of mountains. Why would a dictator want a monument erected in his honor in the middle of nowhere, where no one would see it? Ana’s explanation was something like he was trying to show that he was as powerful as nature or something. I think it was a dumb idea.

Beyond the sheer creepiness and eerie location, the history behind it is what made a lasting impression on me. After three months living in Spain it is hard to believe that it was under the control of a fascist dictator up until 1975, only like 30 years ago. During my first week here, I saw a movie called “Los Anos Barbaros”. It was about two young guys, who escape from an eight year sentence on a work camp, with the help of the comic relief and love interests, an American girl and a Canadian girl. It was hard to imagine that their escape was so recent and in Spain, to me it might as well have been back in years A.D. in Egypt, the movie reminded me of a remake of the four hour long classic “the10 Commandments” but with a car.

The most unbelievable part of the whole movie was that the crime that landed them 8 years in prison was painting revolutionary graffiti onto to a building at la Universidad Complutense, my school, where every surface is thoroughly covered in graffiti! Nowadays, it seems like a new piece of artwork appears everyday, but I have yet to see any arrests made.

Watching the movie, I wondered where that remote middle of nowhere work camp was. As it turned out, I was standing in that exact middle of nowhere! Suddenly the backward-only-in-the -movies-history seemed real. It was staggering to look at all the intimidating imagery and sheer oppressive size of the monument, and to consider that Franco had political prisoners building it from 1940-1959. It seemed so archaic. All semester I have been impressed with how passionate my teacher is in my Comparative Political and Economic Analysis class. He never smiles, which combined with his mustache makes the guy looks like he could be a dictator himself, but he exudes extreme pride and excitement as he screams about “la transición!” Until I saw the Valle de los Caidos I never really understood just how big of a deal la transición from dictatorship to democracy was. As an American it’s too easy to take democracy for granted. This trip made me actually appreciate it as more than just a reason to set off fireworks in July. It also made me excited to be in Spain during such a new and changing period in its history.