El Escorial & Valle de los Caidos

In the words of my friend who posted the picture..."Pat being a dork."

A couple weekends ago a my friend, Anna, and I caught a bus to El Escorial and its neighboring Valley of the Fallen. The town is just 30 miles northwest of Madrid and well worth the trip. Here are a couple photos and some history on the sites...


In the front courtyard of the Monestario in El Escorial.


(Didn't take this one myself, but the views are incredible.)
The monestary was commissioned by Philip II of Spain in 1559, at the onset of his reign (1556-1598) in reaction to the tide of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. Interesting, during the 16th and 17th centuries, the monestary and was a place in which the "temporal power of the Spanish monarchy and the ecclesiastical predominance of the Roman Catholic religion in Spain found a common architectural manifestation. El Escorial was, at once, a monastery AND a Spanish royal palace (Wikipedia)."


Valley of the Fallen. Franco commissioned the construction of the monument and the Catholic basilica at its base at the end of the Spanish Civil War (1937-1939) to commemorate the fallen. Some 40,000 are buried beneath the valley floor. The site is still somewhat controversial however...

Although the valley contains Nationalist and Republican graves, the tone of the monument is distinctly Nationalist and anti-Communist; the supposed balance is rather upset by the inscription "¡Caídos por Dios y por España!" (to "those who fell for God and for Spain"); few of those who fought and died on the Republican side would have said they did so "for God". Additionally, Franco's timing of his announcement of the decision to create the monument left no doubts: on 1 April 1940, the day of the victory parade to celebrate the first anniversary of his triumph over the Republic, Franco announced his personal decision to raise a splendid monument to those who had fallen in his cause (Wikipedia).

A few other fun facts about the site:
-The cross is the tallest memorial cross in the world, rising 152.4 meters.
-Pope John XXIII declared the underground crypt a basilica in 1960, but because the dimensions of the basilica, as excaveted, are larger than those of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome a partitioning wall was built inside the entranceway and left unconsecrated to avoid competition.
-The site's 18 year construction was completed by some 14,000 convicts and political prisoners.