Cardinal José Cobo, Archbishop of Madrid and vice president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), affirmed that there are two “inviolable” lines in the “resignification” of the Valley of the Fallen, promoted by the government of socialist Pedro Sánchez: the Basilica and the monastic community that prays for peace.
“Right now our position is one of dialogue, understanding what the Government wants to do, but understanding that there is a possibility for us to dialogue so that in this entire project that we want to carry out of resignification, we understand that there are some lines that are very necessary and “that would also break history a little,” said the Spanish cardinal in an interview with Europa Press.
Receive the main news from ACI Prensa by WhatsApp and Telegram
It is increasingly difficult to see Catholic news on social media. Subscribe to our free channels today:
“That is not Madrid’s power to decide, that is an agreement that has existed for years. Well, that there is a basilica, I think that is inviolable. Also the decision that there be a monastic community there to pray for peace,” stressed the Spanish cardinal.
“By saving those two points” we can “dialogue,” he said.
“I think we can dialogue because we have not invented history, we have to look at history, we have to learn from it, we have to embrace it too, and I think that’s where we are. Our position is one of dialogue,” the archbishop continued.
“In this project that exists, I believe that we should not look for tensions, nor should we look for ideologizations. Of course, the Church, what we are not going to be at is the dawn of ideology,” the cardinal remarked.
The Valley of the Fallen is a monumental complex whose construction was promoted by the Government of Spain in 1957 as “a place of prayer and study where, at the same time, suffrages are offered for the souls of those who gave their lives for their Faith and for their country, Catholic social doctrine is studied and disseminated.”
The 152.4 meter cross that presides over the complex is the tallest in Christendom.
In 1958 the first community of Benedictine monks arrived at the site. Between 35,000 and 50,000 combatants from both sides of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) are buried in the underground Basilica.
The Valley of the Fallen is made up of the Basilica, the Benedictine Abbey, an Inn and the Escolania. The church was elevated to the Minor Basilica in 1960.
When Francisco Franco died, it was King Juan Carlos who decided that he would be buried in the place, where the remains of the founder of the Spanish Falange, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, also rested.
In 2007, the Historical Memory Law promoted by the socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero prohibited any act of a political nature there. In 2018, socialist president Pedro Sánchez expanded the rule to promote Franco’s exhumation, which occurred in October 2019, forcing the family to bury him in a private cemetery.
In 2022, the Government of Pedro Sánchez approved the Democratic Memory Law, which announces the “resignification” unrelated to its founding objectives. According to the newspaper El Debate, the Executive intends to expel the Benedictine community in 2025, when it will be 50 years since the death of Francisco Franco.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.