VALLEY OF THE FALLEN, Spain (CN) – The morning Mass and its chants, priest's invocations, organ music and prayers end. For a moment, the basilica's colossal interior goes quiet.
The quiet is quickly replaced by a hubbub of echoing voices and footsteps as a crowd of foreign tourists and reverent Spaniards is free to move now that the Mass is over.
They're drawn by a strange historical force to the place behind the altar they've come to see: The tomb of Francisco Franco, Spain's brutal fascist military ruler.
There's not that much to see, really. On the floor behind the altar, there's a simple tombstone with Franco's name on it. Garlands are arranged around the tomb. An association dedicated to upholding Franco's legacy brings the flowers – they are red and yellow, the colors of Spain's national flag.
Franco was buried inside this massive basilica shortly after he died in 1975, but the presence of his tomb at the heart of this massive monument outside Madrid honoring victims of the Spanish Civil War is the subject of one of this country's most acrimonious political dramas. It's a drama pitting the political left against the right.
Removing the tomb is a long-running goal of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party. Since it took power little more than a year ago, it's taken steps to do just that.
“Democracy is not compatible with a tomb that honors the memory of Franco,” said Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo a year ago in announcing the Socialist government's plans to remove the dictator's remains. One proposal is to remove the dictator's body to the El Pardo cemetery outside Madrid where his wife was buried.
But it's far from certain the Socialists will get their way.
That's because Franco's descendants, the Catholic Church, right-wing political parties and much of the Spanish public want Franco's tomb to stay right where it is. Spain's Supreme Court is reviewing appeals to stop the government's plans.
Spaniards visiting the Valley of the Fallen told a Courthouse News reporter that the monument is a historical shrine that needs to be left alone.
“Ask them where he is?” said Maite Del Olmo, a 44-year-old woman from Valencia. “He's dead.” She said it “makes no sense” to remove the remains of a dead person, regardless if he was a dictator. She called efforts to remove the tomb a political move.
Ruberto Mercado Galdon, a 67-year-old from Jaén in Andalucía, was critical too.
He said the debate around Franco's body was a distraction from Spain's more pressing problems, such as dealing with the independence drives in Catalonia and the Basque country.
“We're talking about this instead of issues that are more important,” he said. “He was a dictator of an era that is gone. Forty years have passed.”
He said the Socialist government “wants to win a battle that it lost in 1939.” He was referring to the Spanish Civil War, which ended in 1939 with the defeat of the republicans, who were largely made up of socialists, communists and anarchists.
Although this is a public monument built ostensibly to honor the victims from both sides of the Spanish Civil War, it's plainly a monument to Franco and his dictatorship, which defeated the republicans in large part with the military support of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. The republicans were supported by the Soviet Union.
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