The government advances in the resignification of the Cuelgamuros Valley. After agreeing with the Church, it will not be deacralized and the Benedictines will remain in it, as Eldiario.es advanced, it is the turn of the ideas contest with which the Executive wants to transform the Franco mausoleum. Thus, at the end of next week, it plans to launch the call, open to international candidacies, according to government sources. Hence the winning project with which most of the complex will intervene, with the exception of the main altar and the Basilica benches, which will continue to be dedicated to the Catholic cult.
With the Ideas Contest, the Government seeks to comply with the Democratic Memory Law, which has already modified the name of the previously called Valley of the Fallen and established its conversion in a space that must publicize the circumstances and motives of its construction and its historical meaning. With these bases, the contest will be launched, which encompasses three orders: a transformation into landscape and artistic key, the construction of an interpretation center and a musealization process to explain from panels or other elements what Cuegalmuros is.
Although the denialist discourse is booming that defends that Cuegamuros was made for reconciliation, the reality is that it was exlusively conceived by Franco as a monument to the victors of the civil war, as written by the dictator on April 1, 1940, when he ordered his creation as a tribute to the “Hieraores and Mártires of the Crusade”. These and other circumstances – as its construction by republican labor – must be explained and interpreted, according to sources from the Secretariat of Democratic Memory State. Also the meaning of the great cross, which will not be demolished and that is “the symbiosis between religion and politics” represented by Franco’s National Catholicism.
In the launch of the contest, the Ministry of Territorial Policy and Memory, the Housing and Presidency, the latter in charge of negotiating the details of the resignification have worked to three bands. The process will be divided into different phases: after the publication of the contest, there will be two months to present proposals, ten of which will go to a second stage in which ideas will be developed in more detail. The plan is to have a winning project in September and in May 2026 initiate the process of bidding for the works. The consigned budget is almost 31 million euros: 26 to cover the works, four of fees for the winning project and 650,000 euros in prizes for the ten finalists.
The contest will be anonymous and a jury will be in charge of selecting the proposals. It will be made up of nine people, but for now only one has been chosen: the one that will be on the part of the Church, the current Liturgy delegate of the Archbishopric of Madrid, Daniel Alberto Escobar Portillo, according to Minister Félix Bolaños with the Madrid cardinal. Although the resignification of the complex has been on the table for years and in October 202 the Government specified that it would be done through an international competition, the negotiations with the Church have been the previous step. Sources of presidency justify the pact for “not being able to make decisions about a place of unilateral worship” and to be able to make “the uses of the place with resignification.”
An interpretation center on the esplanade
The physical and conceptual transformation of the space must be “integral” and be directed to the mausoleum itself and also to its environment with the objective of “providing it with a new meaning” and to “address historical memory of scientific and historical rigor,” according to sources of the Ministry of Housing. One of the requirements that the proposals must meet is that they are elaborated by multidisciplinary teams that have architects, artists, landscapers and historians.
The same sources insist that resignification will be aimed at “recovering” space since it is a place “of educational, cultural and democratic use.” Religious use, however, will remain present. The agreement between the Government and the Church establishes that it will not remain outside the process and the Benedictine monks will remain in Cuelgamuros despite the fact that the initial idea of the Executive was to expel them. If the expior Santiago Cantera will come out, one of the most strong resistances to Franco’s exhumation, and some other Francoist monk will accompany him.
The contest reserves the space dedicated to the altar and the adjacent benches for the cult and cannot be intervened in any way. Yes, the rest of the interior of the basilica will be subject to changes, from the atrium or the lobby to the dome. The ideas contest provides that the access esplanade is the place where the interpretation or museum center is installed, whether subterraine or abroad. This must also connect with the basilica through an independent entry to which it gives access to the religious center. The government is aware of the “complexity” of the task due to the magnitude of the mausoleum and its archéctonic deterioration. In fact, six million euros will be reserved for rehabilitation.
To launch the contest, the government has set in other similar processes globally, which have resignified spaces conceived as places of memory. Among them, the Holocaust monument in Berlin, which was also the result of a contest of ideas, the Monument for the Peace and Justice of Alabama, dedicated to racial persecution, or the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago de Chile, whose objective is to give visibility to human rights violations during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and dignify its victims.
Victims exhumations follow
The transformation of Cazgamuros will not be the first intervention that is made in it. The Government exhumed Franco from the preeminent place he occupied in the Basilica since his death and four years later the founder of Falange, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, also came out. In addition, in June 2023 the exhumation work of the victims of the civil war and the dictatorship that were buried in crypts without knowledge or consent of their families began. Franco thus turned the valley into the largest common grave in Spain, with more than 33,000 corpses.
The government currently serves the requests of 160 families looking for their loved ones. At the moment, 29 corpses of the crypts have been exhumed, of which 16 have managed to be identified by name and surname, according to the updated data of the Secretariat of Democratic Memory State. That despite the fact that the works have been submitted since they started the continuous boycott of Franco’s associations, who have tried to paralyze them in court. Precisely this Wednesday justice gave the green light back to the process.
On the table also has the Executive of Pedro Sánchez the Royal Decree with which the new legal framework must be established under which Co -Camuros will remain when the foundation of the Santa Cruz del Valle de los Fallen will be extinguished. And there will be key what role the Benedictine monks will have in the management of the Escolanía and the lodge. “We will see”, sources from the Ministry of Presidency respond, which insist that with the Royal Decree it will be followed “the principle maintained so far to dialogue with all the parties” and reach solutions that “have permanence in time” and are “agreed.”
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