Santa María de la Alameda

Here I discovered what it was all about. The "Valley of the Fallen" is a Franco inspired 13.6 km sq monument to honour and bury those who died in the Spanish Civil War, the main features being the cross and the church, whose nave lies 150m below the former.
The church, which Pope John XXIII declared to be later proclaimed to be the "Basílica de la Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos" was made from a shaft bored out of the solid rock like an underground railway with side passages for the transept. Did we say Herrerian? It's big.
In fact the Basilica of the Holy Cross of the Valley of the Fallen would have been even bigger than St. Peter's Basilica in Rome had they not partioned and refrained from consecrating the first 50 or 60m of it.
No photos allowed of course, and the security guards who x-rayed my back pack confiscated by penknife in case I was tempted to carve revolutionary slogans into the solid, marble clad granite. My first, and final so overwhelming was it, impression was of a vast Wagnerian drinking hall, reminiscent of the Hitler Youth training camp I had once stayed at in the 1970's. I grabbed a photo surreptitiously, knowing now what kind of fascists I was up against. I also managed to get one of the paired and winged angels guarding the entrance as well, but I failed to get the hooded Templar Knights forming the light bases on the wall. (I also stole the ceiling cupola photo and the entrance gate for your viewing pleasure.)
About 40,000 people are buried in the valley so they say, and two within it. And this is proving to still fuel controversy. The one, Francisco Franco, buried the other, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, who founded the Falange movement and was executed in 1936 by the Republican government on the same day and month that FF did 36 years later. So every 20th Nov when a memorial Requiem mass is held for them, it turns into a Fascist Rally.
On the other hand, there have been several limitations of site access which the Church and the Political Right Wing have claimed to be discrimination against them. Protesters also like to remind everyone that the monument is tainted by the blood of the 10% of construction workers who were Spanish Republican political prisoners.
When one looks into though, the prisoners used in the construction came from both political sides and volunteered in order to get a reduction in their sentence.
The irony in this, which itself fuels continuing arguments, is that whilst Franco is buried there with fresh flowers on the grave each day, he had expressed a wish to be buried in Madrid and not in the monument!Read more