El Valle de los Caídos — or the Valley of the Fallen — has stood largely untouched since a massive war monument was completed in 1959. The site is the resting place of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco and José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the leader of Falange, the far-right party that supported him. It is also one of Europe’s largest mass graves, housing the remains of 33,700 people killed in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939. [...]
Thousands of families in recent years have tried to find and exhume loved ones who were killed during the war, or the ensuing years. The current campaign to exhume relatives from the Valley of the Fallen — led by seven separate families — is unusual for including the families of nationalist, not only republican, fighters. [...]
But in December 2007, the Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero introduced a “Law of Historical Memory” that sought to formally acknowledge the victims of the civil war and dictatorship, as well as their families, and paved the way for the removal of symbols of the regime.
Dozens of statues of Franco were removed from town squares and the names of streets dedicated to the Caudillo and his generals were changed. Many on the right saw the law as needlessly raking over the past. Yet the initiative failed to satisfy many on the left, who felt it was too timid.
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