The mausoleum of the Spanish dictator will be renovated to avoid visits by those nostalgic for the regime

The impressive “Valley of the Fallen” shrine, a symbolic site of the Franco regime that housed the dictator’s tomb until 2019, will soon be redesigned, the Ministry of Housing has announced. On Tuesday, the Ministry revealed the winning project in an international competition.

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“‘Plinth and Cross’, the winning project in the international ideas competition for the reinterpretation of the Quilgamorros Valley, proposes a new vision for the monumental complex,” the ministry announced on social media, a few days before the 50th anniversary of Franco’s death, which occurred on November 20, 1975.

The Valley of the Fallen, renamed the Quilgamoros Valley by the current leftist government, remains a place of pilgrimage for those nostalgic for Franco’s regime. To achieve its reinterpretation, the government led by Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez launched this architectural competition, with hitherto anonymous entries, which aims to bring about “a change in the collective perception of place.”

Since taking power in 2018, the Sánchez government has strived to rehabilitate the memory of the victims of the civil war and the Franco regime. To this end, in 2022 it promoted the “Democratic Memory” law, which seeks to honor victims of the dictatorship and urges authorities to remove symbols of the Franco regime, among other measures.

The ancient “Valley of the Fallen” includes a cathedral built on orders from Franco, 50 kilometers from Madrid, where his body remained until his grave was exhumed in 2019. Thousands of political prisoners worked to build it for 20 years. In the cathedral, which is crowned by a huge cross 150 meters high and visible from kilometers away, are the remains of about 33,000 fighters who fought on both sides of the Spanish Civil War.

The Spanish dictator's mausoleum will be renovated to avoid visits by those nostalgic for the regime - Photograph: Oscar del Pozo/AFP — The Spanish dictator’s mausoleum will be renovated to avoid visits by those nostalgic for the regime – Photograph: Oscar del Pozo/AFP

But the remains of many Republicans were transferred there without informing their families. Franco’s grave occupied a place of honor in the basilica’s altar since his death in 1975 until the Sanchez government decided to move his remains to a cemetery on the outskirts of Madrid in October 2019.

Also on display are the remains of José Antonio Primo de Rivera – founder of the Falange, the fascist party that was one of the pillars of Franco’s regime. The regime’s bodies were also exhumed and transferred to a civilian cemetery in April 2023.