I'll put myself in the "go" colum. It is a ruggedly beautiful place. It has a sad history, true. Over time the memory of repression and civil war will fade, but the monument will endure. Remeber, the men who died in its construction were vindicated in the end. Spain is a free and prosporous democracy now, thanks in part to thier sacrafices. So visit and remeber them, and say a prayer of thanks for thier souls.

I'm in the "go" (and "went already...twice") category. See my posts in the ETA thread to see what I think of Franco. I went anyway. It's not odd to me that Franco would build an elaborate church in which to be buried. The church in Spain became his ally, and from it he drew great power and validation (see the current ruling party: PP for a microcosm). The description of Valle de los Caídos as a monument to all the fallen is only recent (post-Franco), in a PC-type of move. The Falange gather there annually to honor the past, not the fallen Republicans.

Most who have studied Franco know that when he started, his rule was referred to as a "dictadura". By the time his days were numbered, it was already referred to as a "dictablanda", and that he was probably contemplating meeting his maker. He went soft(er). Throughout history, those who had the means desired burial close to the church with the thought that they would be closer to God in the afterlife. Check out where Franco and Primo de Rivera are in relation to the cross of the basilica next time you're there...

Artistically and from an engineering standpoint, V.d.l.C. is a marvel, without question. I think that cantabene's point is right on. How many millions have visited the Colosseum in Rome? How many Christians met their doom there? Apparently absence makes the heart grow fonder...because those things happened millennia ago, it's a "historical site". V.d.l.C. is too contemporary. We have family who we KNOW who suffered under Franco, and therefore choose to temper our appreciation of the architectural and historical significance of the shrine with feelings of hate and rancor, not to mention the sadness felt over who really built it.

Because many of us lived as contemporaries to the Franco regime, we feel connected and feel authorized to comment and vote "no" to going. I feel that you can go and still save your dignity and preserve your prejudices.

Franco was no different than any other murderer or Robber Baron who achieves an "eleventh hour salvation" because he fears what may be awaiting him in the afterlife. His masterful manipulation of the willing church to divide Spaniards and secure support from the wealthy was his greatest strength. The sycophantic Falange and those made rich by his leave would not be alongside him after death to assure him what a great Patriot and Caudillo he was. If Franco could convince those who came later how great he was perhaps he could convince God. Even so I will visit the Valley on my next trip to Spain.

People visit Dachau and Auschwitz to bear witness to history--to honor the memories of the murdered, not the murderers. But imagine if Hitler had won the war and the camps today were a place to gather to pay tribute to the gas chambers as marvels of German engineering or the operating rooms as the birthplace of advances in medical science--with a huge, gaudy shrine to Hitler in the midst of it all. THEN they would be obscenely analogous to El Valle de los Caidos.

My uncle fought with the International Brigades in Spain. I knew one of Franco's prisoners of war. So my contempt for this shrine to a fascist has personal as well as political roots. But I don't tailor my travel itineraries to my socialist tendencies any more than I avoid visiting churches because I'm an atheist. I simply prefer when I travel not to waste my time on sites that I know in advance present not history, but rather a shameful distortion of history.

As for aesthetics--time is in short supply on any vacation, and we all need to make choices about what we do and do not see. Would anyone on this board argue that this place simply cannot be missed because its beauty is unsurpassed by that of any other architecture Spain has to offer?

It's an aesthetic monstrosity, so for those to whom this appeals... You know, it is interesting, the culture/history/aesthetics intersection. I went to the Shrine of Guadalupe outside Mexico City (Basilica de Guadalupe). It is, architectually, one of the ugliest places on earth. The little moving sidewalk beneath the 'shroud' with the image of Guadalupe made me laugh. But I have a cultural thing about Guadalupe, and do lots of reading about her, think about her figure in myth and literature. When I went to Guadalupe (Spain) last summer, that Monasterio was so moving, so splendid, and when they turned the little statue of the black Virgen de Guadalupe around, I burst into tears. Well. I'm no Catholic, was not experiencing any religious extasy. It was aesthetic. But you knew that from the great Italian painters/sculptors who in the Reniassance started that transformation to the extatic secular/religious. che bella, la madonna!

I agree that there are (many) other wonders of architecture in Spain more worthy of a visit. That point is not in dispute. Nevertheless, this is a manifestation of a more contemporary part of Spanish history. Regardless of your political leanings, it is what it is: A testament to almost forty years of Spanish history. History is told through the eyes of the conquerer, and when the conquerer is vanished, then history is either retold, revised, revisited or (in the case of Stalin) erased. Spain has yet to nationally revise or retell that story on a wide scale, so places like VdlC still have a draw. Additionally, there are those students of history (like myself) that feel the need to take in as much as possible in order to accurately contemplate both sides of the struggle.

Franco hated certain things about what his Spain had become, and certain people and ethnicities in that Spain, and when placed in a position of power, he quashed them. His legacy is that of a dictator, regardless of the fact that he saw himself as a reformer, a restorer, and a "place holder" until monarchy was again restored to Spain. By letting ourselves see both sides of the struggle that was the civil war in Spain, we can truly make our own call. By letting someone else tell us the "official story", without experiencing or studying on our own, we mimic the behavior which allows dictators to come to power in the first place: indifference and ignorance. I personally feel that the information and experience that I gather first hand is more valuable to me than the belief in a second- or third-hand account. That is why I visited Dachau, that is why I have twice visited Valle de los Caídos.

CaliBasco, I don't question your motives or your sincerity, and I certainly applaud the intelligence you've brought to this debate. I suppose it's the absence of precisely this level of discourse that causes me to abhor El Valle de los Caidos. There's no balance to be found at resistance museum like Denmark's, no memorial to Dolores Ibarurri, no grave of any kind at which to honor the disappeared Garcia Lorca--only a grotesque monument to one man's immortal ego. I reiterate that Franco's legacy is the obliteration, not the preservation, of 20th-century Spain's history, and I want no part of that. But I suppose this is one of those issues about which people of good faith must agree to disagree.

Franco's impact on Spain and Spaniards will continue to be debated hotly. The irony is that even though American brigades fought against Franco, we benefited because he and not the Communists won.

There is little doubt that had Franco lost, Spain would have become a Communist country.
And distasteful as the Franco regime was to many, we in the USA were fortunate during the cold war that Spain was not a Communist bastion.

There was no hope that the Republic would have been restored after a Comunist victory. And it's probable that the life of Spaniards would probably have been even worse under Communism. Look at Cuba.
Cantabene

[This message has been edited by cantabene (edited 02-11-2001).]

[This message has been edited by cantabene (edited 02-11-2001).]

A communist country? onnnnk. Like France became after WWII? The excesses of the Republic would have been tamed just fine if Franco hadn't invaded. Had the U.S. intervened, it would have been all over.

[This message has been edited by rgf (edited 02-11-2001).]

France after WWII was a U.S. dependant, occupied by thousands of U.S. troops, so there was little chance of it going communist.

During the Civil War, the communists were the strongest element of the republican coalition, and the USSR was their biggest foriegn backer. I don't recall communists anywhere allowing a "correction" once they seized control of power. I think that Franco, for all his exceses and oppression, prevented a communist takeover of Spain in the 1930's. Franco's Spain was a valuable ally to NATO and the U.S during the cold war and beyond. Had it been a Soviet ally, the Cold War might have turned out much differently.