Many tourists who visit Madrid have been told to go and see the Valle de los Caidos (Valley of the Fallen) located outside Madrid. For many of these tourists it is just something else to see in Spain. For Spaniards it means much more. For some, those who were on Franco’s side during the Civil War, it is a good place to visit, for others it is a disgrace, a sad and tragic place. What it really is is a mausoleum built mostly by political prisoners of Franco’s regime under his orders and for his glory. A work which lasted 20 years.There not only the remains of dictator Francisco Franco are buried but it is also the last resting place of tens of thousands of Spanish Civil War victims. Some were identified at the time of burial as Franco supporters. But the majority of the bodies are believed to be those of Republican supporters. Of the more than 500,000 people who died in the war and the repression afterwards, ten of thousands were buried in unmarked graves around Spain. Many of them were dug up and placed in the mausoleum without the consent or even the knowledge of their families. Now the Spanish Parliament has approved a proposal for the government to try to account for all the bodies within six months, and to help in exhuming them if relatives wish.
At the same time, and after finally coming out of the ‘pact of forgetting’ that Spain entered after the death of the dictator, Franco, in 1975 to ignore bitter memories and move forward, many Spanish people can finally look for the unmarked graves of their dead, located all over the country, whose crime in many cases was not to have belong to the fascist side of Francisco Franco. One of the most famous burial places which is going to be looked into is a portion of land near Granada where it is believe the remains of Federico Garcia Lorca rest. One of the country’s greatest poets and dramatists, Lorca, whose crime was to have been homosexual and to have enrage the conservatives with his work, was shot dead along with three other men by gunmen loyal to Franco a month after the start of the Civil War in 1936.
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