Taking a dictator to his family crypt

The burial of Francisco Franco in the underground church of Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen), carved out of a craggy, granite hill, 58 kilometers northwest of Madrid, is at the center of a controversy that also concerns the burial, in the same place, of some 40,000 victims of the Spanish Civil War. Many bodies were brought there without the consent of the families.

The huge monument, built mainly by the forced labor of some 20,000 political prisoners between 1940 and 1958, includes a hostel, a studies center, a Benedictine abbey and the underground basilica, which houses the ossuaries where the remains lie. Also interred there is the founder of the fascist Falange organization, José Antonio Primo de Ribera, who might be considered one of the fallen in the war, having been arrested by the other side soon after the military rising in 1936, and shot by a firing squad. Today's surviving Falange movement long held yearly rallies at the Valley of the Fallen, until these were prohibited by the present government. But Franco himself can hardly be considered one of the fallen, having died of old age in a hospital 40 years later.

His sepulture in the basilica, it is said, alters the meaning of the huge, ornate monument. Though it is clearly meant to glorify the sacrifices on Franco's Nationalist side, initially some lip service was paid to the idea that it commemorates all the fallen from both of the war's camps. Accordingly, many leftist groups linked to the defense of historical memory have been demanding that the Valley of the Fallen be transformed into a center for historical interpretation of the war, seen in a pluralist (that is, not so one-sided) perspective. The 2007 Historical Memory Law requires that the site be "depoliticized" and represent the suffering of both sides, but how these guidelines are to be applied has yet to become clear.

The continued presence there of Franco's remains has brought constant headaches to the Socialist government. One solution seems to point to El Pardo, on the northwestern outskirts of Madrid. The palace of El Pardo, an old royal residence, served as Franco's residence throughout his long dictatorship, which lasted from 1939 till his death in 1975. The idea is that Franco's bones might be transferred to a family crypt in the cemetery of Mingorrubio, near El Pardo, where the remains of his wife, Carmen Polo, have lain since her death in 1988.

The vaulted crypt occupies 36 square meters, so there is plenty of room for other tombs. It was assigned to the Franco family by the then-Madrid Mayor Carlos Arias Navarro, who was Franco's last prime minister and a friend of the family. Carmen Polo thought it "too luxurious," says Rufo Gamazo, now 87, an advisor and friend of Arias Navarro: "A few weeks before Franco's death, Arias asked Franco's daughter, Carmen Franco Polo, whether the family had any plans for her father's burial, and she said they had none." In Gamazo's opinion, "the decision to bury Franco in the Valle de los Caídos was not his own, nor his family's." He adds: "It was probably a decision of the king."

Not far from the Franco crypt lie the remains of Luis Carrero Blanco, a hard-line authoritarian admiral who was Franco's chosen successor until his assassination by ETA in 1973; and those of other Franco ministers. A few social democrats, such as Francisco Fernández Ordóñez, foreign minister under former Socialist Prime Minister Felipe González, keep them company.

Anselmo Álvarez Naverrete is the abbot of the Benedictine abbey at the Valley of the Fallen. Asked about the presence of Franco's remains in the underground basilica, when he was not one of the fallen, he points out that "there exists a tradition by which the builders of temples enjoy the privilege of having themselves interred in the monuments whose construction they sponsored." But he adds: "However, if the family accepts a transfer elsewhere, the Benedictine community has no objections."