Spanish Civil War: The remains of the founder of the Phalanx transferred from the Valle de los Caidos

The monument in Valle de los Caidos, west of Madrid, has long hosted the remains of former dictator Franco and Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of the Falange.

REUTERS/Sergio Perez

Text by: François Musseau Follow

3 mins

The dictatorial period and the harsh Spanish civil war (1936 -1939) are once again making their way into the Iberian news.

The Law of Historical Memory, promoted by the ruling socialists, has just been approved in the Senate before it comes into force and has caused the great mausoleum of Valle de los Caidos, west of Madrid, to become a civil cemetery, and no longer religious.

The consequence is that the family of the founder of the Falange, Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, demands his exhumation.

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In October 2019, the dictator

to be buried in a private cemetery.

So it's Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera's turn.

José Antonio Primo de Rivera was the son of a dictator who ruled Spain in the early 20th century.

He had created the phalanx, a self-proclaimed fascist and ultra-nationalist movement.

He had been sentenced to death by the Republican government, then shot, in 1936, at the very beginning of the Civil War.

Twenty years later, in the midst of Francoism, his remains had been transferred to the Valle de los Caidos, a huge patriotic monument.

And in 1975, when Franco died, his body was buried in the crypt of the basilica of this same monument, right next to Primo de Rivera.

Franco and Primo de Rivera are the two symbols of Spanish fascism.

Media attention on Franco

When the government

this basilica in October 2019, it did not do the same with Primo de Rivera's remains.

All the media attention was then fixed on Franco, who ruled Spain for 4 decades.

For the socialists in power, it was absolutely necessary that his corpse leave this place, which had been designed as his megalomaniac mausoleum.

In the grave next door, there was Primo de Rivera, therefore, but no one said anything, because his displacement was not a claim of the left, since the founder of the Falange was certainly a proclaimed fascist.

But he had never governed, he had even been a victim of the Republican government, having been executed in the 1930s.

Symbol of Catholic Spain

His family is now asking for his transfer to another cemetery because with the law on democratic memory, not only are we abolishing all the symbols of the dictatorship, we are reopening the mass graves, but we are also transforming the Valle de los Caidos, the mausoleum of Franco and Primo de Rivera, in a civil, neutral place, where no homage can be made.

For the descendants of the Phalangist, this is unacceptable because for them, their ancestor is the great symbol of patriotic and Catholic Spain.

It cannot therefore remain in a neutral place of memory.

These descendants asked for his transfer to a Catholic cemetery, as soon as possible, and with the greatest discretion.

The government immediately accepted, too happy to get rid of the remains of this cumbersome figure.

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