I've been to Spain many times, but always to a single location. The glory of this trip was a cross-country drive that took us from the hot, dry hills of the Mediterranean coast to the verdant Alpine valleys of the Basque Country's Atlantic-facing shoreline. In between was more than 800 miles of diverse landscape.
Most of our drive was heavy on agriculture and light on people. Spain is twice the size of the United Kingdom with less than half its population. The ten and a half hours we spent road tripping across our second week took us through majestic but desolate mountains, rolling agriculture plains, well-stocked cattle country and expansive olive groves. Had we been travelling a few weeks earlier we would have seen miles of bright yellow sunflowers turning their heads to the light. Now they're drying on their stems in advance of being harvested for their oil. It's a crop that, according to one of our local guides, has exploded in popularity this year in an attempt to capture the market opportunity left by the war in the Ukraine. All of our driving took place on beautifully maintained but lightly trafficked highways. If not for the mountains on the distant horizon, or the occasional village dominated by a church that seemed too grandiose for its population, the trek through the vast farm fields between Madrid and Salamanca could be mistaken for Interstate 55 through central Illinois.
In the 360 miles between Valencia and Salamanca, only Madrid imposes any sense of population or modernity. It does that with force. Suburbs sprawl for miles. Modern malls loom. Apartment blocks tower. Its network of tunnels is efficient but can perplex: it took the on board sat nav and two of us concentrating hard not to take a wrong turn as we attempted to circumnavigate rather than enter the capital. Not for the first time, we wondered why our European neighbours seem to be so much better than us at infrastructure. I suspect the motorway through the the city is hellishly crowded at rush hour, but our journey early on a Saturday afternoon was easy.
If you happen to be making a cross-country drive and need a place to stretch your legs, or if you're in Madrid and hunger for a change of scene, the Valley of the Fallen (Valle de Cuelgamuros) is an intriguing choice.
The mountaintop cross with an enormous basilica burrowed into the granite below is also spectacularly controversial. Though Spain's Fascist dictator said it was a national memorial of atonement and reconciliation, sketchy records suggest that there are far more of Franco's side buried here than his opposition. Evidence suggests the prisoners brought in to built it ... most of them political opponents of the regime ... were treated as slave labour. Many are said to have died in the construction and have been buried in the gloomy pine woods of the mountain below. There are no records. It is not a happy place.
It's also a lonely one. There's little traffic up here; at several points we were alone on the vast, windswept plaza and in the cavernous church. Directional signs are sparse. The gate with a couple of guards on it hardly suggests a major tourist attraction. The tourist facilities facing the car park look like they've been boarded up for years. You get the impression that the government is purposely discouraging visitors, something reinforced by the monument's closure for maintenance for almost four years earlier in the century and the movement of Franco's tomb from here in 2019.
Why in the world, therefore, would you bother with this place? First, because it's an important part of history and what we don't remember we risk repeating. Second, because it's visually remarkable. The nearby palace and monastery of El Escorial would be the more logical sightseeing choice, but Spain is full of grandiose Renaissance architecture. This haunting, brutalist memorial is unique in its style and setting; not just in Spain but, in my experience, in all of Europe.
The 500-foot tall cross at the pinnacle of the mountain sits on a plinth supported by gigantic sculptures of the evangelists who look like they've just emerged fully-formed from the granite of the mountain. It's visible from as much as 20 miles away, but you need to get inside the 3,000+ acres of woodland surrounding it to really appreciate the size. Don't attempt this without a car; there are miles of roads through the pine forest before you finally get to the parking area near the summit 3,000 feat above sea level. As the road climbs through the pine forest you start to get hints of the building below the cross; a huge colonnade built against the mountainside with enormous plazas stretching before them. There are car parks below two sides of the plazas, with ceremonial staircases leading up. At the back, the mountain rears. At the front, it falls away. The open space here is on the scale of St. Peter's in Rome. The colonnades even bigger. But the Vatican is always thronged with people. Here, the space seems all the bigger because you're sharing it with so few.
There's an archway in the centre of the colonnade, directly below the cross, with a door set within it. A pieta has been carved with jackhammers from the living rock above. Mary and Jesus look more like stone trolls than their traditional selves. The scale of everything seems intended to dwarf the visitor. Making the individual feel insignificant is one of the main purposes of Fascist architecture in Europe, but I've never seen it done to such a scale as it is here.
The whole high fantasy feel is enhanced by the set of eight enormous Renaissance tapestries ... each almost 30 feet long ... interpreting scenes of apocalypse from the Book of Revelations. There are monsters, knights engaged gory battles, mystical figures floating in the air, tormented sinners and a repeating theme of many-headed composite beasts. Lion's and dog's heads float on snake-like necks joined to winged bodies and cloven hooves. I've never seen a set of tapestries like them, and they're in remarkably good shape.
I suspect that producers of Game of Thrones or the Rings of Power have salivated over the idea of using
this place as a filming location, but as it remains a consecrated church so that's not going to happen. It is still, as intended, the monument to the fallen of the civil war and on that front deserves enormous respect. Ironically, the monument itself is in a back corner of a side chapel off the main altar, and remarkably humble. It is therefore the only spot in the complex that conveys a true sense of reverence.
We visited on a gloomy day, with inky clouds racing across the sky and the half-light of a stormy afternoon washing everything into monochrome. This no doubt coloured my perception of the place. And yet I can't imagine a better backdrop for a visit. The monument is glowering, dark and moody; it seems appropriate for the weather to match.
While I understand the discomfort that many Spaniards have with the Valle de Cuelgamuros being a tourist attraction, I'd argue that it should remain one.
Civil wars are dark, unnatural and bring out the worst in people. It's somehow fitting that the architecture that marks this period evokes a literary genre that typically has people facing off against supernatural evil. One can only hope that learning about such things in the past gives us a better chance of keeping them in the realms of fiction in the future.
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