The Valley of the Fallen (El Valle de los Caídos)

	The monument is an underground church and tomb topped with a 500 foot stone cross, which can be seen from a distance of 30 miles. Although supposedly honoring all the dead in the Spanish Civil war, only two names are commemorated, those of General Francisco Franco and of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falange (and safely dead before the mausoleum was started). Most critics see this gargantuan memorial, not as a mode of post-civil war reconciliation, but rather of Fascist theatricality. And we are often reminded that prisoners on the Republican side, many of whom lost their lives in the process, were forced to quarry this huge cavern out of the rock. Sculptures were designed by Juan de Avalos.
The central entrance
The colonnades defining the arc of the plaza The monumental quality of this memorial is created by the use of a huge plaza, tall colonnades arcing on each side, and a grand central entrance.
		The colonnade Typically, Fascist architect has as it goal the diminishment of the ordinarily human (note how the scale of the architecture dwarfs the people) and the aggrandizement of the megalomaniac dictator.
The interior The interior is one long converging tunnel (technically a basilica) ending at the tomb of the dictator who ordered its construction.

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Page created by Mary Ann Sullivan