Democracy Without Justice in Spain. Omar G. Encarnacion
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monument’s main basilica.
By the time El Valle was inaugurated in 1959, its purpose had shifted dramatically by seeking to advance two seemingly contradictory goals: honoring Franco’s victory over the Republicans during the Civil War (the original intent) and serving as a new symbol of national reconciliation. The latter is hardly a match for the former. The more than half a million people who visit El Valle annually, the vast majority foreign tourists, cannot escape the overwhelming sentiment of witnessing a shrine to Francoism.22 Almost every feature of the monument seeks to link Franco’s triumph over the Republicans to Spain’s religious tradition of epic evangelizing crusades: from the reconquest of Spain in the fifteenth century over the Arabs, to the expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, to the “discovery” of the Americas. In this sense, El Valle serves as a powerful symbol of the symbiotic relationship between church and state that was consolidated under Franco.
El Valle’s awkward nod to national reconciliation is suggested in the few hundred Republicans buried at the monument alongside some 50,000 Francoist supporters. How the remains of the defeated Republicans ended up buried beside those of the Nationalists at El Valle remains the source of some dispute. Some reports propose that this was a last-minute development suggested by the Catholic Church to underscore the monument’s new mission of closing the wounds of the Civil War. According to this narrative, relatives of Republican casualties could have the remains of their loved ones buried at El Valle provided they had documentation proving their relatives were Catholics. Most likely, however, the Franco regime exhumed some of the unmarked Republican graves found throughout the country and reburied the remains at El Valle without anyone’s consent, or simply buried Republican workers who helped build the monument. In any case, the existence of Republican remains at El Valle did not deter Franco himself from offending their memory in a speech to mark the dedication of the monument:
The anti-Spanish forces have been defeated and destroyed but they have not died. Periodically, we see how they raise their heads, and, in their arrogant blindness, seek to poison and stimulate once again the innate curiosity and ambition of the young. For that reason it is necessary to silence the advice of the bad teachers over the new generations.23
After 1959, promoting national reconciliation was dictated by the political realities of the day. For starters, two decades into the Francoist era, the myth of salvation from war and destruction—the founding myth of the Franco regime—was wearing thin, if only because memories of the Civil War among ordinary Spaniards were becoming increasingly distant. After 1959, the regime was also quite keen on improving its image abroad, having found itself internationally isolated after the end of World War II and the defeat of fascism in Germany and Italy. The effort at promoting national reconciliation culminated in 1964 with the extravagant “Campaign of 25 Years of Peace,” a series of commemorative events marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the end of the Civil War. This grand commemoration included films, publications, and even a “peace parade” (highlighted, ironically enough, by a strong military presence) and was intended by the Franco regime to relegitimize its authority by highlighting its accomplishments rather than its origins (Aguilar 2002: 118–19).
Franco’s vast propaganda machine, organized around a national news and documentary service, Noticiarios y Documentales Cinematográficos (NODO), played a prominent role in promoting the authoritarian regime’s new emphasis on national reconciliation. Created in 1943 to facilitate dissemination of state cultural and information policy and to distill both domestic and international news for the public, NODO served the state with the dual purpose of consolidating control over information and using information as a propaganda tool. Its main products were newsreels, shown in the nation’s cinema houses alongside feature films, the primary form of popular entertainment prior to the advent of television in the late 1960s.24
As a propaganda tool, NODO’s primary mission was to promote the Franco regime and its accomplishments. The typical NODO newsreel highlighted the progress of the dictatorship, as suggested by the building of a new public work, such as a dam or a highway, as well as the purported benevolence of the dictator, as seen through the expansion of housing and recreational opportunities for the workers. Franco himself was a frequent subject of NODO documentaries. From 1943 to 1959, NODO’s coverage of Franco emphasized crediting the dictator with keeping the nation from falling back into civil war; after 1959, coverage aimed to tie the dictator to the advent of “peace and progress.” According to Ellwood (1995: 202), between 1943 and 1975, Franco appeared in over nine hundred NODO reports, which was equivalent to 4 percent of NODO’s total production. Franco’s appearances dwindled over the years from a record forty-five in 1965 to a mere nine in 1974, and two in 1975. This decline largely reflects NODO’s skilled manipulation of the image of the dictator. Franco was most likely to appear on the screen during periods of economic growth and relative stability, and to fade away during times of economic crisis and domestic turbulence. Conspicuously absent were references to the economic misery of the immediate postwar years and the repression of political dissidents.
NODO was also in the business of producing documentaries that provided an in-depth look at historical events. The agency’s most famous documentary, El Camino de la paz (The Path to Peace), dealt with the Civil War. Released in 1959, after memories of the war were no longer so vivid, the film conveyed the false impression that Franco’s Nationalist uprising had been necessary to restore peace and order following the Second Republic’s attacks on Spanish culture and institutions. Yet, as explained by Aguilar (2008: 128), El Camino de la paz also marked an important departure from the traditional depiction of the Civil War by suggesting a more realistic treatment than previous propaganda products from the regime. For one thing, an actual war was acknowledged, in contrast to previous interpretations of the Civil War as a crusade or liberation, and “reds” and “nationalists” were even mentioned as warring parties. The overall treatment, Aguilar wrote, is “more tragic than heroic,” a point underscored by use of actual war footage. The larger message—that no one should forget the bloodshed of the Civil War and the sacrifices that this fratricidal conflict entailed, was emphasized in the film’s closing words: a plea to God “to never again allow Spanish blood to be spilled in civil wars.”25
A Paradox of Forgetting
Although the Pact of Forgetting was intended to set the past aside, it had the paradoxical consequence of allowing for the persistence of plenty of reminders of the very things Spaniards were trying to forget. In keeping with the desire to avoid anything that could arouse political passions, those in charge of the democratic transition took no official position on the hundreds of monuments and memorials honoring either the Nationalist side in the Civil War or the Franco regime itself. Without national policy from the central government in Madrid dictating how to dispose of Francoist monuments and memorials, Spanish regional governments—created after 1977 when Spain undertook a massive process of state decentralization leading to the establishment of seventeen “autonomous” communities—adopted separate approaches. In Republican strongholds like Catalonia and Valencia, and in fiercely independent regions such as the Basque Country, symbols of the old dictatorship, like street names, were quickly replaced with Republican symbols and names of local significance. In parts of the country where Spanish nationalism was not controversial or Franco’s Nationalist crusade enjoyed popular support, such as parts of Andalusia and Navarra, there has been little incentive to purge public spaces of the material legacy of the old regime.
More generally, the unwillingness of the political class to deal with the complexity of Franco’s material legacy has resulted in a “syncretic process whereby the symbols of the old and new Spain coexist alongside each other” (Rigby 2003: 77). The most important material reminder of the dictatorship is the infamous Valle de los Caídos, but it is hardly the only one. Spanish currency bearing Franco’s image remained in circulation until the disappearance of the peseta in the late 1990s with the introduction of the euro. The Francoist coat of arms was displayed in churches, convents, and monasteries for decades after the fall of the regime. As of 2004, Madrid was home to some 360 streets bearing the names of people or acts associated with the Franco regime, and until 2005 a statue of Franco in full equestrian attire adorned the Plaza de San Juan de la Cruz in Nuevos Ministerios, a central area of downtown Madrid that is home to embassies, government offices, and multinationals.26