ABSTRACT
The Valle de los Caídos – Valley of the Fallen – is a monumental place of worship located in the mountainous area of the Sierra de Guadarrama. It was designed and built under the dictatorship of Generalísimo Franco, between 1940 and 1959, as part of the memorial landscape around the capital Madrid, which was intended to symbolise the triumph of the nationalists in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). After the death of Francisco Franco, who was buried here in 1975, and the transition to democracy, the Valley of the Fallen became a place of pilgrimage for those nostalgic for the dictatorship. This chapter discusses the history of the Valle de los Caídos under changing socio-political conditions from its construction during the first phase of the dictatorship to the contemporary debate on how to deal with this gigantic legacy of Francoism. In recent years, the bitter conflicts over the future of the Valley of the Fallen have expanded into a broad discussion about how to deal with the dictatorial past, emphasising a special characteristic of this unique legacy of the Franco dictatorship, namely its “dispute value”.
