The reinforcement of Franco’s discourse –while setting aside the voice of those who fought against fascism—is an illustration of how a symbol of oppression can be sanitised. However, the same media that that for decades ignored the prisoners’ plight has recently changed its approach. Tàrio Rubio a former soldier who endured years of forced labour would be allowed to reminisce about being constantly hungry and how few of the 20,000 prisoners who built the compound still remain alive. He could express in an interview that the prisoners never got compensation for the years spent as slave labour, and not even the 1980s elected government recognised the injustice of their incarceration. To him, the injustice has been perpetuated because the ‘fascists’ continue to have pensions, but not those who fought against Franco (Víctor M. Amela, La Vanguardia Digital, 06/11/2007). Although the Vanguardia article shows an effort to recognise aspects of the hitherto silenced past, the republican side is solely memorialised through interviews, articles, and blogs. This ephemeral approach reveals a sharp contrast to the everlasting built environment of a sumptuous, albeit aesthetically debatable, monument. The Valley of the Fallen Situated in Cuelgamuros, an area of the Madrid sierra, the Valley of the Fallen, is a mismatch of architectural styles that comprise an abbey, a crypt, a social studies centre, a basilica, an esplanade, an arcade, a hospice and a cemetery. The immensity of its dimensions and the amount of materials used in its construction uncover its purpose as a mausoleum for Franco himself, who was interred there in 1975. The crypt, an underground church, is 260 metres in length, while the cross rises 150 metres above the base and 300 metres above the esplanade; in total the area containing the monument covers 1377 hectares.
The Valley’s construction began in 1941 and ended in 1959 but its cost has been difficult to calculate. Nonetheless it was staggering considering that the country’s economy had been ravaged by the civil war and was subsequently isolated from global markets. Although it is the most noticeable of the monuments, others were raised to the dead on the winning side in all of Spain’s towns and villages. Their names were recorded on or at the feet of crosses erected in prominent places and every means was sought to ensure that their memory was periodically honored. But hardly any plaques exist that recall the victims of the Republican side. Furthermore, it was the defeated and their ideological heirs who were obliged to suffer the indignity of building the tomb of the victors. A dialogue that never was Dialogue with the defeated would not take place during Franco’s time (1939-1975). Thus the memory of thousands was relegated to oblivion. At present, a dialogue of sorts has been initiated by the law of historical memory. 3 The law, however, is not ample enough to encircle Spain’s geography of war and remembrance. It does not encompass a landscape ‘graphically visible’ in space through the recently found unmarked graves, and ‘historically visible’ in time through the newly told account of people summarily executed. This dual panorama, while linked to new and distinct historical developments, alternately ‘anchor’ and ‘destabilise’ conventional accounts of post-civil war events, and jeopardises the painstakingly built status quo. But the groups and individuals invoking the concept of historical memory—beyond and above the limitations of the state’s law—not only think about the past, they also act on it. By their actions, these groups are beginning to create other forms of collective memory and altering the meaning of both semiotic objects: the unmarked graves and Franco’s monument. below left: A common grave outside the cemetery at Portbou.The white stone shown here marks Walter Benjamin’s probable resting place among outcasts, non- Catholics, anti-fascist guerrillas killed both by the Nazis and Franco’s army, and those executed summarily by the Guardia Civil in the years of political repression. Some individuals still cherish the memory of those interred without a name, as is attested by a little jar with fresh flowers at its side. below: Franco’s pharaonic Nationalist monument,The Valley of the Fallen. It contains a basilica with what appears to be an angel of vengeance ( opposite ) with sword and malevolent visage, inadvertantly illustrating Franco’s politics of revenge. Inside the basilica, the walls are stained by water and rust, today symbolising the blood of the slave labour that built this monument.
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