The ruling Socialist Party (PSOE) in Spain has ruled to overhaul a prominent historical monastery and site of the world's tallest cross into a secular museum.
(LifeSiteNews) — Spain’s social government wants to desacralize a Catholic site of pilgrimage.
The ruling Socialist Party (PSOE) in Spain has ruled to overhaul a prominent historical monastery and site of the world's tallest cross into a secular museum despite reaching an agreement with the Spanish Episcopal Conference. The news arrives after a flurry of April announcements that the government will run a competition for firms to bid to redesign the location and turn it into an “interpretation center” in accordance with the “values of today’s society.”
The Valley of the Fallen, lying in the hills near Madrid, is a location featuring a Catholic basilica, an active Benedictine monastery and a 150-meter-tall cross. The site was constructed under the regime of General Francisco Franco – a principal reason for the present controversy – and remains a popular tourist and pilgrimage hotspot.
The chosen winners of the competition will enjoy a 30-million-euro budget to implement their plans (approved by the left-wing PSOE party).
However, as news emerges the government intends to “desacralize” the space radically, opponents now say government redesign plans are going further than agreed.
Catholics and conservatives have criticized the decision to turn the location into a secular museum altogether. Those concerned say the changes will illegitimately desecrate and promote a gerrymandered, propagandized, and partisan “official version” of history agreeable to the PSOE, which was itself a part of the coalition government that fought against nationalist forces and persecuted the Catholic Church before and during the Spanish Civil War.
The Spanish ecclesiastical hierarchy, after initially agreeing to and permitting moderate reform of the site, are now complaining that the government is “taking initiatives without resolving prior issues” and not “consulting the Church about the details or issues that should be clarified in advance, in case religious spaces and sensitivities are not respected.”
“The terms of the agreement between the Government and the Holy See are general, and the details or specifics of the agreement have never been examined,” they clarified.
The Spanish bishops nevertheless insist that meetings between the Holy See and the ruling PSOE government held in Rome established that the Basilica “where the Eucharist is celebrated, as well as its liturgical and religious symbols” would be maintained … and “[a]rtistic and museographic interventions” would “guarantee the liturgical and cultic purpose of these spaces without affecting them.”
Furthermore, the statement claims the meetings guaranteed “the continuity of the Benedictine monastic community in charge of the liturgical service of the basilica, the guest house, and the choir school.”
Official announcements surrounding the shape the upcoming changes and “resignifications” to the Valley will take have remained vague and are to be announced with the competition winners.
READ: Spanish bishop laments widespread loss of Catholic faith in his country
However, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda has now stated that only “the altar and adjacent benches” will be left out of their interventions. Meanwhile, “the vestibule, the atrium, the intermediate space, the unoccupied nave, the dome (but without the altar), and the chapels of the Holy Sepulchre and the Blessed Sacrament, are not intended for worship and may be subject to… interventions to redefine the site.”
Opponents fear actions may still yet go further, as early proposals for intended changes included calls from Félix Bolaños, Minister of the Presidency, to “desacralize” the crypt – where the Basilica lies – and remove Catholic worship altogether.
Luis Felipe Utrera-Molina, the lawyer defending the Valley from left wing opponents (who have been open about their desire to dismantle its 150-metre-high cross), lambasted the concession on the part of the bishops as another example of “naivety, or bad faith, of the Church hierarchy”.
“It has taken the government only a few days to make them out to be liars. And that’s what happens when you pact with liars. You can’t expect the devil not to betray you if you make a pact with him,” he said.
Only days after an ostensible agreement was reached on 4 April, after a communique claimed that the cross and basilica had been “saved,” the Spanish Episcopal Conference have backtracked.
A 16 April statement reads: “... we wish to state that the Catholic Church has never been a promoter or driver of the redefinition activities that the Spanish Government wishes to carry out in the Valley.”
The decision by the Socialist government in Spain extends from their earlier actions after passing a 2022 law on “Democratic Memory” after which street names, statues, and roadside crosses were removed due to their alleged fascist links.
Conflict between Catholic authorities in Spain and the Socialist Party has a long history. PSOE leaders such as Margarita Nelken during the Second Spanish Republic advocated violence in the widespread persecution of Spain’s Catholic landscape. Spain's ancient Catholic faith was seen as an obstacle to revolutionary, socialist, and republican principles.
During the same “Red Terror” by the republicans in the Civil War, some 20,000 of Spain’s 42,000 churches were destroyed as “13 bishops and 6,832 clergy [and religious], including 4,184 diocesan priests, 2,365 members of religious orders and 283 nuns” were killed.
Columnist and author Gerald Warner, writing for Reaction, describes the horrors: “Sometimes priests were castrated before being shot. Their exhumed bodies often showed bullet wounds to the right hand, having been shot while blessing their murderers. Canoni[z]ations are still flowing from this unique period of martyrdom. Lay Catholics were murdered in incalculable numbers.”
Warner accused the PSOE government of wanting to “falsify” history rather than preserve it, and “to cover its own shame by silencing anyone publicly addressing the crimes of the Red Republic it led.”
The Valley of the Fallen, which was inaugurated in 1959, is the resting place of 33,000 victims of the Spanish Civil War from both sides of the conflict and was intended to be a monument of reconciliation.
Legal battle over the site – which is regarded by the Spanish left as a contentious symbol of and inheritance from the regime of General Franco– has continued for the past decade. This led to the General’s exhumation in 2019.
However, left wing politicians and lawyers are not yet satisfied. As news emerges that the government and Vatican negotiations have agreed the cross will not be removed, further outcry, this time from the Spanish left, has pushed back against the Church’s influence.
Emilio Silva, President of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, claimed it is “neither acceptable nor understandable" that the Catholic Church shall remain at the site "when it was an active participant and beneficiary of the repression suffered by millions of people."
The PSOE’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda revealed in a press release that its subsequent competition to redesign the Valley and turn it into a secular museum is inspired by the Berlin Holocaust Memorial. It describes how architecture becomes "a tool at the service of… collective memory, capable of transforming places marked by history into settings for learning, encounter, and projection into the future."
The ministry further described that it wishes to “redefine it from a plural, inclusive, and contemporary perspective … creat[ing] an international benchmark that demonstrates how architecture, art, and landscape can act as tools for memory, reconciliation, and building the future”.
