Francisco Franco, the dictator who controlled Spain's blood and fire with the dream of running his own church

Francisco Franco It's wrapped up in the cloak of national Catholicism to decide the birth of the Valley of the Dead, a very expensive religious complex in a Spain of blood, concentration camps and rationing. The texts of the time abound in the props that accompanied the dictator until his death, always at his side, the incorruptible arm of St. Teresa of Avila. "Holy Crusade against the tyranny of the wicked." "Save the Christian civilization", for example, were sentences written at the time. God, fatherland and faith, Victoria. Fallen Holy Cross Pilgrimage. Basilica

The first paragraphs of the decree of April 1, 1940 of the seat of the State on hangings They are like a sermon of time: "The size of our crusade, the heroic sacrifices of victory and transcendence that this epic has had for the future of Spain, can not be perpetuated by the simple monuments with which the milestones of ours are commemorated in villas and cities History and glorious episodes of the Sons of God. " This is how the creation of the Valley of the Dead is announced.

Franco had the intuition that Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini would not be able to win the war against the rest of the world and this prompted him to treat the Catholic Church with deep devotion. So that has become its main support, showing herself in public as a recurring participant in the daily Mass, rosary before dinner and four days of spiritual exercises each year with the Jesuits.

These Christian concerns are exalted in the first decree on the valley, which he built in front of the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo El Escorial, so far from Madrid. Like Carlos V and Felipe II, Franco dreamed of running his own national church, with power over the Vatican, and consolidate the role of savior of Christian civilization. Instead, the popes, including John XXIII and Paul VI, arrested him in a political fight that ended during Lent in 1974, when Cardinal Vicente Enrique and Tarancón went on returned to the palace El Pardo with the decree of excommunication and warned the dictator that he would execute the papal sanction if the government persisted in the idea of ​​sending the bishop of Bilbao, Antonio Añoveros, in exile. According to Tarancón, the caudillo, very sick, started crying and murmuring that he had always been a faithful Christian.

From here, the dictatorship he had allowed anti-clericalism unleashed for yearsHe had opened a prison reserved for priests in Zamora and had discussed with Paul VI the election of bishops, which Franco wanted to call his whim. Always raw more papist than the pope. In 1937 he banned the publication of the encyclical in Spain Mit brennender Sorge (with a burning concern), who condemned Nazism with a theological crash. Even Hitler was not allowed this license. Franco paid dearly. The one who was behind the encyclical published by Pius XI was the future Pius XII, formerly in Germany and secretary of state that year. He took revenge. In 1939, Franco dreamed of quickly signing an advantageous concordat with the Vatican, after granting the Roman Church all the privileges it wished to take. Pius XII made him wait until 1953. Nevertheless, Franco ordered to publish the agreement with this heading: "In the name of the Holy Trinity".

Mussolini was presented a year ago in the construction of a monument in the shield portbetween Burgos and Santander, to receive half a thousand soldiers, but for the Spanish dictator, the funeral tribute of the fascist leader, still known today as "the cemetery of the Italians", seemed to lack historical respect. He would build one that would catch the world's attention forever. His cousin and trusted secretary, General Francisco Franco Salgado-Araújo, recounted in his memoirs My private conversations with Franco that the dictator had the habit of watching for hours the drawings that his architects proposed. The cousin compares him to Napoleon III, who toppled whole neighborhoods to rent the center of Paris to your liking, and even with Hitler, who also it was ecstatic evenings watching the model from a new city that had commissioned the architect of the Third Reich, Albert Speer.

Franco would not make a city. His diet was intellectually chaotic and marginal. He would build a huge set crowned with a 150-meter cross, of which 25 correspond to the basement with the four evangelists (18 meters each); 17 meters from the intermediate body with four cardinal virtues and 108 meters from the crossing. To all this, we must add the height of the Nava cliff used as a bedrock, another 150 meters.

Why did the chief choose the rock of Cuelgamuros? Obviously, to compare with Felipe II. The order says: "The stones that rise must be the size of the ancient monuments, which challenge time and forget"The decree-law by which, 16 years later, August 23, 1957, the Foundation of the Holy Cross of the Valley of the Dead is created and any power conferred on the Benedictines, insists on the same principle. large monument to perpetuate the memory of fallen soldiers in the liberation crusade ". honor those who gave their lives for God and for the homeland and for generations to come, for example.

Thus the valley of the dead, contrary to what the Church tends to assert, has never been a monument of reconciliation, but of the exhilarating victory and destruction of Spaniards by others. "Against the tyranny of the wicked and preserve the holy crusade that we have undertaken to save Christian civilization, "wrote José María Pemán.

Franco never thought of being buried there. His family did not like him either. This was written in 2011 by his grandson Francisco Franco Martinez-Bordiú in the book The nature of Franco, when my grandfather was a person"My grandfather never said he was buried in the valley of the dead. He and my grandmother had a pantheon in El Pardo for years and he always thought that there, near the place where he had spent most of his life, he would rest. But when he died, the highest instances asked us if it seemed right to bury him alongside José Antonio Primo de Rivera. My grandmother accepted. She would regret the rest of her life not being able to share with her husband the grave of El Pardo that they bought together.

The decision of the funeral was signed by Juan Carlos I, in the idea of ​​moving away from Madrid the bunker falangists who, led by José Antonio Girón de Velasco, wanted take advantage of the opportunity to manifest anger at the openness they perceived that the new head of state would undertake. Cardinal Tarancón tells in his memoirs. It is he who warned the king of the intentions of the "ultras". The head of the government, Carlos Arias Navarro, had sent him the request, which seemed to be an order, that the funeral was "all bishops and someone important at the Vatican". Tarancón thought that few bishops would accept the order if they were forced to go in procession to Cuelgamuros.