Spain to exhume bodies from Fallen Valley
MADRID: The Socialist-led Spanish government has allocated funds for the burial and identification of thousands of people who died during the Spanish Civil War.
Outside the capital, Madrid, is a complex of the fascist era and the former burial of dictator Francisco Franco.
Confirming the plan, Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Callo wrote on Twitter: “Preserving the memory is not only a renovation of past actions but also a building of democracy in the present and in the future.”
An estimated 100,000 people who died in the war are buried in unmarked graves across the country.
The valley of the valley was originally only for the bodies of those who had fought alongside Franco against the republic.
But in 1959 the remains of many Republican opponents from across Spain were moved there.
The complex remained a place of pilgrimage for fascists and other supporters of Franco, until the dictator’s remains were removed and buried in a discreet family plot outside of Madrid in 2019.
But this tomb is still there, which is a symbol of anti-democracy that should have long ago been removed, reported DW.
The irony of history is that the basilica and mausoleum were partially built between 1940 and 1959 by forced labor of political prisoners.
The Spanish Civil War was fought from 1936 to 1939. Republicans loyal to the left-leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic, in alliance fought against a revolt by the nationalists, an alliance of monarchists, conservatives and traditionalists, led by a military group among whom General Francisco Franco soon achieved a preponderant role.
Historian say, “due to the international political climate at the time, the war had many facets and was variously viewed as class struggle, a war of religion, a struggle between dictatorship and republican democracy, between revolution and counterrevolution, and between fascism and communism”.
