In the Bricia moor, north of the province of Burgos and a few kilometers from the border with Cantabria, a giant imperial eagle remains, crouched, made in 1940 in marble and concrete. Since then, it has been waiting for the moment to raise its wings and take on its prey, the enemy. At the beginning of the year, this Franco monument – recognition of the collaboration of General Antonio Sagardía in the military coup against the Second Republic and a propaganda metaphor for the regime – was proposed to be protected and thus avoid its eventual destruction, as a result of the application of the Democratic Memory Law. However, the Junta de Castilla y León has finally decided not to initiate the Asset of Cultural Interest (BIC) file that it did approve last February for the so-called Pyramid of the Italians, a fascist monument located just a few steps away. 18 kilometers north of Águila de Sagardía.
Those who travel through the stark landscape of Bricia say that the eagle is imposing, that it is even scary. But now, given the uncertain future posed by the lack of legal protection for this mass, it will do so to a lesser extent. The Ministry of Culture of Castilla y León reports, in this regard, that in 2023 it received the request for protection from the Association for Reconciliation and Historical Truth, a group whose philosophy consists of “keeping intact the historical memory of Spain, as well as of the Spanish historical and artistic heritage”. However, the documentation provided “is not endorsed by any scientific institution” so “it is not possible to assess the initiation of this heritage asset.”
The institution points to this scientific endorsement as the key to withdrawing the file, in order to mark distances with the declaration approved on February 29 in the Cortes of Castilla y León for the Pyramid of the Italians which, according to the ministry, did. had. In fact, the Minister of Culture, Gonzalo Santonja, then justified that this request came from an individual who had presented various articles of his authorship, published in organizations such as the Sautuola Institute of Cantabria, the Royal Catalan Academy of Fine Arts of San Jordi and the Pablo Olavide University of Seville. Likewise, Santonja stressed the “uniqueness” of the fascist monument, which he attributed to being “the only one in Spain of this type of interwar architecture,” as a pillar of the file that was later carried forward.
one step back
In any case, and despite the fact that the Minister of Culture of Castilla y León announced then that the declaration of this type of property would be taken “arguably”, Gonzalo Santonja then confirmed the imminent processing of “more projects”, which would be examined “one for one.” Proposals that would be extracted from a list prepared by his then Vox colleagues (the Government coalition with the Popular Party, the first of its kind in the country, broke up on July 11, but Santonja continued as head of Culture), which It collected a set of 190 assets distributed throughout different provinces of this community, in order to circumvent the Democratic Memory Law approved by the central Government. Of all of them, the one that appeared in the pools as the successor to the Pyramid was, precisely, the tribute to the so-called column of Sagardía, whose protection has finally been discarded.
Indeed, it is worth remembering that the refusal to initiate this file, beyond the specific reasons given by the Government of Castilla y León, occurs in the midst of the process of distancing the Popular Party of Alfonso Fernández Mañueco from the postulates of Vox. The last episode of this ideological “divorce” took place on September 25, when PP and PSOE overturned the processing of the future Concord Law that Mañueco himself had negotiated with the extreme right months ago. The only party that defended its approval at the time was Vox, with the failed intention of carrying out a norm that avoided condemning the Franco regime and equated the victims of the Civil War and those of the Franco regime with others murdered during the Second Republic, establishing a time range. between the years 1931 and 1978.
A place of exaltation of Francoism
For decades, and despite the fact that in recent years the Sagardía monument has been forgotten and vandalized, the Águila served as a meeting point for the meeting of ex-combatants. Specifically, the Efe agency notes the concentration, in October 1962, of nearly 3,000 former soldiers of the 62nd Division in the area of the Burgos municipality of Cilleruelo de Bricia, in an act of remembrance of General Antonio Sagardía, who died in January that same year, with the presence of his family. Meetings and celebrations that until now have been reduced and limited to few and solitary tributes.
If the Pyramid of the Italians was built in the middle of the Civil War as a kind of funerary monument, to bury the bodies of the soldiers sent by Mussolini who had died supporting the Franco coup, the case of the Eagle of Sagardía is somewhat different. With the construction of this marble giant, the dictator Franco wanted to reward the work of Antonio Sagardía Ramos at the head of the 62nd Division of the Navarra Army Corps. One of his most notable missions consisted of tearing down the Northern Front, an 80-kilometer-long line, defended by the Republicans between the Palencia town of Revilla de Pomar and the aforementioned Burgos municipality of Bricia. The general from Zaragoza, already retired and residing in France during the Second Republic, returned to lead this attack and, once the Republican defense was overcome, he managed to enter Cantabria and arrived in Santander.
Despite a significant number of casualties, Sagardía had achieved the set objective. Along the way, the general had stood out for his harsh repression against members of the Republican side. To his credit there are dozens of extrajudicial shootings, including elderly people, women and children. The Franco regime took note of the achievements of the so-called Sagardía column and took advantage of its military success to turn it into another argument for the dictatorship’s powerful propaganda machine. This is how the commission for a monument was born, which fell to the Basque architects Eduardo Olasagasti and José Antonio Olano. The project was carried out in 1940 by the Altuna construction company. Data, all, that are inscribed on the surface.
Beyond the imperial eagle, made of marble and concrete, the monument includes a commemorative tablet. Its interior is solid, although there is supposedly a hole in the bird’s belly in which the military documents of the Franco general appear, an extreme that would only be confirmed if the monolith was eventually demolished. On the outside, the original inscriptions—among which the popular Francoist slogan “Presente!” stands out—are mixed with a multitude of defacements and graffiti, accentuating its perceptible state of abandonment. Now, the sudden stop of the Ministry of Culture of Castilla y León has done nothing but “cut the wings” of a group that cherished its protection to escape the Democratic Memory Law.
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