Overview
The Valley of the Fallen is a spectacular monument to the dead of the Civil War in a beautiful setting deep in the Guadarrama Mountains. The valley, formerly the Cuelgamuros, is splendid with granite outcrops and pine trees; the road circles the monument that comprises a church hollowed into the base of a massive granite spike crowned by an immense Cross.
The Juanelos.
The monolithic columns at either side of the road entrance were designed as part of an arch by Juanelo Turrianio, clockmaker to the Emperor Charles V.
Basilica.
The west door in the basilica’s austere granite facade, is crowned by a pieta carved by Juan de Avalos. At the entrance is a fine wrought iron screen with 40 statues, in metal, of Spanish saints and soldiers. The 860 ft nave (St. Peter’s, Rome: 610 ft.; St Paul’s London 500 ft.) is hung with eight 16C Brussels’ tapestries of the Apocalypse between dependent chapels above whose entrances are alabaster copies of the most famous statues of the Virgin in Spain. A cupola 138 ft in diameter above the crossing shows in mosaic the heroes, martyrs and saints of Spain approaching both Christ in Majesty and Virgin. On the altar stands a painted wood figure of Christ Crucified against a tree trunk by the sculptor, Beovides; at the foot is the funerary stone of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falangist Party and that of Franco. Rivera was the son of the tough dictator General Miguel Primo de Rivera. Shortly before civil war broke out, the Republicans arrested him and some months later he was tried condemned and shot. Had he lived, he might well have challenged Franco for the dictatorship. Contemporary photographs show that he bore an uncanny resemblance to Hermann Goerring.
History
The Valley of the Fallen commemorates the most important event in modern Spanish history, and one of the most important in the history of modern Europe: the Spanish Civil War.
Chronology
1923. Dictatorship of General Miguel Primo de Rivera.
1931. Republicans seize power in several towns in Catalonia. The king abdicates and goes into exile. A constituent Cortes (parliament) is elected with a socialist republican majority.
1933. Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera (son of the above) founds the Falange, an extreme right‑wing ‘fascist’ party.
1933-6. Political seesawing, with revolt against a conservative Cortes majority in Catalonia and Asturias (northern mining area), and army plots against the republic.
1936. The Popular Front (left coalition) wins the elections in February. In July the army uses the assassination of the monarchist leader Calvo Sotelo as an excuse to intervene. General Francisco Franco leads the army in from Morocco, and the Civil War rages. Germany and Italy supply the Franco side with arms, but Britain. France and other democratic powers refuse to intervene. By February 1939 Britain and France recognize the Franco regime, although Madrid and Valencia continue to hold out for another month. Forty years of rule by Franco follow.
Causes of the Spanish Civil War
1. Spain was an extremely backward country. Peasants in the south, working on the latifundia (huge tracts of land owned by single landlords), had the status of feudal peasants, poverty was rife.
2. Extreme polarization of society was largely due to the all-pervading Influence of the Catholic Church, which was closely allied with the large landowners, and ideologically close to the monarchist and falangist leaders. Thus it provided a rallying point both for those opposed to it and those supporting it.
3. The thirties were a period when socialism and communism seemed to hold out a real hope for the future of working people. This was, after all, before the worst excesses of Stalinism had come to light. Revolution and the destruction of the capitalist system seemed a real and desirable alternative to stagnation and the abuse of human dignity.
4. The various regions of Spain, especially Catalonia, wanted more regional autonomy. They were tired of being ruled from Madrid, which was a bureaucratic city, when most of the industry and wealth‑creation lay in Catalonia and the Basque country. There were continued revolts against central authority. This is still a problem today, of course.
Significance of the Spanish Civil War
1. It was a warm-up for the Second World War. The failure of the French and British governments to support the democratically elected government of Spain, and the success of the fascist powers in bringing down the republic, gave the Axis powers (i.e. Germany, Italy)’the sense that they could do whatever they liked. This was the beginning of appeasement. It also reinforced the idea that right wing ideas were bound to win out in the end.
2. For the Spaniards concerned, the Civil War was a devastating event. The statistics are staggering. A million Spaniards were killed or escaped
to exile. The atrocities on both sides were appalling. Claims of republicans raping nuns may be exaggerated, but they did burn churches.
Guernica (pronounced Ger neeka) was bombed to the ground by the falangist (and German) forces with enormous loss of civilian life. This event inspired Picasso’s famous painting, but was an example of the utter inhumanity of this war.
3. For individuals the effects were also terrible. Two examples:
a) Arturo Barea worked in the republican propaganda ministry in Madrid. After several brushes with death and having been ‘purged’ by communists, he escaped to England after suffering a nervous breakdown. He never returned to Spain.
b) Manuel Cortes was the Socialist mayor of the town of Mijas (which you may be visiting). In order to avoid certain death at the end of the war he went into hiding in his own house, and stayed there for thirty years until amnestied by the, Franco regime. His story (brilliantly told in the book “In Hiding” by Ronald Fraser) exemplifies the human tragedies of the Civil War. When his daughter married he was, of course, unable to attend to the ceremony. However, during the reception in his house, he positioned himself behind a door so that he might see his daughter in her wedding dress, the centre of attention if only for a few moments.
The aftermath of the war
The story of Manuel Cortes is a reminder of the most important point about the war: its long-term repercussions. The Civil War exhausted Spain, and brought about a sense of fatalistic conformity with the Franco regime aided by his brutal repression of dissenting opinion. Franco remained caudillo (leader; cf Fuhrer) of Spain until his death in 1975: a reign of nearly forty years. During this time he refused to allow Spain to develop into a modern state. The power of the Catholic Church and large landowners remained unopposed. There was no divorce, abortion, contraception, civil marriage communist party or free trade unions. Culture and freedom of expression were emasculated. This was not really fascism, but a dull cloying system, which kept workers on the land in almost medieval conditions and prevented the expressions of opposing views.
On his death, Franco nominated Juan Carlos as his successor, intending that a ‘Catholic monarchy’ should rule the country. However, Juan Carlos had other ideas: An 1978 he brought in a new constitution establishing democracy in Spain. The first government had a lot of old Franco figures in it, but the Socialist government, led by Felipe Gonzalez, was a major break with the past in 1985 Spain signed the treaty of accession to the EU, ending its isolation from the rest of Europe. However, the attempted coup in 1981 showed that the anti-democratic spirit of the Spanish army is not yet dead.
El Escorial
The name means ‘slag heap’ and derives from the hill on which the complex was built, where mining deposits were dumped. It is more properly known as El Real Sitio de S..Lorenzo el Real de Escorial. Enclosed within the forbidding walls, are a bewildering collection of buildings including a monastery an enormous church, a royal palace, a royal mausoleum, and a famous library. Like the Royal Palace in Madrid, it:is still conserved by the Patrimonio Nacional. Since 1792 it has formed ciudad of itself. The huge and austere edifice mainly Doric style, is a rectangular parallelogram 676 ft from N to S and from E to W – with towers at the corners, and loftier towers and the dome of the church rising in the centre. Statistics strive to convey an idea of its size; it contains 16 courtyards. There are 2673 windows of which 1100 are external and 1200 doors, 86 staircases and over 2 miles of painted frescoes. It required 1,500 workmen to build but was completed in 21 years (1563-1583), which is why the architecture has an exceptional unity of style.
In amongst the Grecian columns of the edifice you will see two great Bronze doors through which passed the bodies of many Spanish kings, princes and princesses, on their way to burial in the Royal Mausoleum. As the funeral procession reached these doors, the monks would ceremoniously undress the royal corpse of its worldly titles.
“Who seeks entrance?” They would ask.
“The Emperor of the Spanish Empire.”
“Who seeks entrance?”
“The King of Spain.”
“Who seeks entrance?”
“The man Carlos”
Only then would the gates swing open.
It is also considered one of the largest granite monuments in the world, next to the Sphinxes of Egypt. Yet the edifice has little which is royal, religious, or antique. The clean granite, blue slates, and leaden roof look almost new. The windows are too small, but had they been planned in Proportion to the facades the rooms lighted by them would have been too lofty, and thus external appearance was sacrificed to internal accommodation. Nevertheless, the building has a certain grandeur of conception that had characterized the real arbiter of taste, Philip II, whose attitude is best summed up in his own instructions to the architect Herrera; “Above all do not forget what I have told you; simplicity in the construction, severity in the whole, nobility without arrogance majesty without ostentation.”
Phillip II built the Escorial in 1563. His objectives were, twofold; to obey the wishes or his father Charles V by constructing a royal Mausoleum for the Habsburg dynasty and to fulfil a vow made at the battle of St Quentin, which was fought in 1557 on St Lawrence’s day (Aug 10th). The story that the ground plan of the structure is intended to represent the gridiron on which St Lawrence was martyred is a later fancy, indifferently supported by the ground plan itself. The first architect Juan Bautista de Toledo, who
had worked with Michelangelo on St Peter’s in Rome, was summoned from Naples in 1559 and the first stone was laid on April 23rd 1563. But Bautista died in 1567 and his pupil Juan de Herrera completed the work, on Sept 13th, 1584. Fifty Hieronymite monks occupied the monastery; the Colegio or theological seminary was placed under their direction. Here for fourteen years Philip II lived, half king, half monk, boasting that from the foot of a mountain he governed the world .old and new with two inches of paper.
Here you can describe the latter days of Philip, as he quit the world, and found solace in a small set of rooms overlooking the chapel. He would sit, with his foot propped up to relieve the unbroken agony of his gout, mournfully awaiting his own death, as all around him died. He lost his insane grandmother Juana, his father Charles VI all four wives, his deformed and half-mad heir Don Carlos, his half-brother Don Juan, and many of his advisors. His swollen knees that worsened dramatically as a result of three to four hours daily spent kneeling in prayer, soon prevented him from leaving his rooms. The grand architect of ‘ the greatest Catholic. Empire the world has seen was reduced to eavesdropping on the Mass through a little window giving onto the chapel. Philip studied by candlelight as couriers brought him reports from all over the world. He applied himself diligently to his paperwork making minute and detailed observations in the margins of his documents. As the years progressed, bureaucracy and red tape began to choke the Empire to death. Philip, though he was never quick-witted or particularly bright, hated to delegate, and towards the end lost countries and continents, whilst he was struggling to escape from mountains of paper.
At the height of his power, he was ruler over an Empire, which stretched to all corners of the known world. It included Spain, Portugal Sicily, Naples, Milan, parts of the Netherlands and France, colonial possessions in America, Africa, India and the East, the Philippine Islands were named for him, and during his two year marriage to Mary Tudor, he was titular King of England.
As Europe struggled to resolve the dynastic struggles of the 16th Century, Philip by virtue of his four marriages to the royal houses of Austria, Portugal, England and France was in the unusual position’ of being able to lay claim to almost any European throne or dominion.
That he did not succeed in establishing the complete domination of his Catholic Empire is due at least in part to his preference for bureaucracy, rather than action. He saw only one battle in his life, and the spectacle disgusted him. He ruled his empire by letter from El Escorial, and from his self-imposed prison conceived grandiose schemes such as the Ill-fated invasion of England. Yet he never travelled to Lisbon to inspect the Armada, when it was anchored in the River Tagus, and never sought to rally his fleet with a personal appearance.
Throughout his isolation, religion was his only comfort. He worshipped an all-powerful, all-knowing and unmerciful God and sought to personify that same authority by virtue of his belief in the divine right of kings. He
called on the Catholic Church to support him and it is fitting that he found refuge at El Escorial amidst these massive structures representing the temporal power of the church.
The palace, although enlarged and richly decorated by later monarchs, was intended by Philip as a simple appendage to the monastery, where he might spend his later days in religious peace. But for the decoration and enrichment of the rest, vast sums were spent. Distinguished artists from Italy and elsewhere were invited to cover the walls with frescoes and paintings; rare books and manuscripts made the library one of the most valuable in the world; while the church was enriched with some 515 reliquaries, enshrining (it is said) 7421 relics. Also of interest in the church are two groups of statues facing the altar. On one side Charles V, the first Habsburg King of Spain, whose desire to be buried in a family Mausoleum prompted the construction of El Escorial. He is depicted in thoughtful prayer with eyes downcast, flanked by his faithful wife Isabel of Portugal, his sisters Maria of Hungary and Leonor of France, and his daughter Maria. Charles wears a flowing bronze robe decorated with the Habsburg Eagle. On the other side his son Philip II, brooding spirit of the Escorial, kneeling in supplication, but staring arrogantly at the altar. He is accompanied by three of his four wives: Maria of Portugal, Elizabeth of Valois and Ana of Austria, (Mary Tudor being notably absent), and by his heir Don Carlos.
In 1671 the monastery and some of its valuable contents were damaged by fire. In 1808 the building was plundered of its bullion by the French under La Houssaye, who left the relics in a pile on the floor. The exterior was also damaged. Fernando VII did what he could to repair the damage, but after his death many of the best pictures were removed to Madrid. It ceased to be a royal residence c. 1861, and since 1885 the monastery has been occupied by Augustinian monks.
Segovia
Segovia, an ancient town of Iberian origin, rose to importance under the Romans, who captured it in 80 B.C and gave it the name Segobriga. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Visigoths occupied the Spanish peninsula and made Segovia the seat of a bishop. Later, it was taken by the Moors, who are believed to have introduced the cloth industry for which the town was long noted. But in 1085, it reverted to the Christians, and even became a royal residence.
Segovia went on to play a central role in the unification of Spain. For 700 years the Christian areas of Spain were governed by a multitude of minor Spanish kings operating in various regions but by the end of the fifteenth century these strands had begun to come together. In 1468, many grandees refused to recognize the legitimacy of Enrique IV’s daughter Dona Juana la Beltraneja, tactlessly named after her mother’s favourite Beltran de la Cueva, who was in fact a lowly court guard. Rumour also had it that Enrique IV was impotent. At any rate, Enrique was clearly convinced of his wife’s infidelity, and publicly promoted his half-sister Isabel as heir to
the throne by leading her horse through the streets of Segovia. In 1474 on the day of her half-brother’s death, Isabel the Catholic was proclaimed Queen. There is a fresco in the Alcazar, located in the old town of Segovia, depicting the proclamation ceremony with the Queen dressed in white (the mourning colour of the 15th Century). She duly assumed all powers of the Kingdom of Castile. Next year her husband, Fernando V of Aragon (Ferdinand the Catholic) took an oath in the Alcazar to respect the privileges of Castile. In the 14th and 15th Centuries the Cortes frequently met within the walls. In 1520, the people of Segovia actively supported the cause of the rebel Comuneros (see below) but its Alcazar, symbol of the power of the monarchy, remained loyal and untaken.
The Comuneros
The Spanish were considerably incensed at the beginning of Charles V’s reign by the Emperor’s Flemish court and companions – the Low Countries then formed part of the vast Habsburg Empire – and his attempt to impose absolute rule and new taxes. Town forces (comunidades) under the leadership of the Toledan, Juan de Padilla, and the Segovian, Juan Bravo, rose in revolt but were finally crushed by Charles’ army at Vallalar in 1521. Shortly after the battle the leaders of the comuneros were executed in Segovia.
The Roman aqueduct is not only one of the finest still in existence, it is still operating. The massive aqueduct, known familiarly as El Puente, is built of huge blocks of Guadarrama granite, without mortar. It is 2392 ft long and rises to a maximum height of 92ft in the Plaza del Azoguejo.
It has been assigned to the reign of Trajan (1-2C A.D.) and conducts the waters of the Riofrio to the city. Beginning near S Gabriel. E of Segovia, it spans the intervening depression and intersects the city towards the Alcazar, the latter part of its course being subterranean. In 1071-72 thirty-five of the arches were destroyed by the Moors, and they lay in ruins until 1483-89, when Isabel employed Juan Escovedo, a monk of El Parral, to rebuild them (letting him retain the scaffolding in lieu of payment); but apart from these and a few more modern restorations it is an untouched monument of ancient engineering genius. In 1520 images of the Virgin and S Sebastian replaced those of Hercules in the niches above the loftiest pier.
The Alcazar, occupying the W extremity of the, ridge of the old town, straddles and looks sheer down into the valleys of the Eresma (H.) and the Clamores (W.). It is built possibly upon Moorish or even Roman foundations. Enlarged in 1352-58 by Enrique II, it was further extended by Catherine of Lancaster and her son, Juan II, between 1410 and 1455 but in.1862, when occupied as an artillery school it was seriously damaged by fire so that apart from the towers,, most of what we see dates from a restoration begun in 1882., The conspicuous features are the great Torre de Juan II, Homenaje, with seven turrets, its roof providing a fine panoramic view. The Torre de Homenaje was a state prison under Philip V, grandson of the Sun King Louis XIV of France. In 1726 the King confined his minister Ripperda (1680-1737) here though the prisoner escaped two years later.