Sixty-four years after being deposited next to the main altar of the Basilica of the Valley of the Fallen, the remains of the founder of the Falange, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, will be removed this Monday from the renamed valley of Cuelgamuros.
As happened with Francisco Franco, the exhumation of Primo de Rivera is part of compliance with the Democratic Memory Law of 2022. But that is where the similarities between the two exhumations begin and end since, unlike what happened in October 2019 with the remains of the dictator, the family of the considered martyr of the coup side has opted for the greatest discretion.
The operation, just on the day that marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of the Falangist leader, will be carried out with the temple closed tight and with the only presence of family members and workers in charge of raising the large slab that covers his tomb. . The prior of the Benedictine abbey, Santiago Cantera, will pray a response before the coffin leaves the mausoleum by road towards the San Isidro cemetery in Madrid, where after cremation the remains will be deposited along with those of other relatives, such as his brothers Miguel and Pilar.
There will therefore be no helicopters, no nostalgic cheers on the main esplanade, nor, in short, none of the paraphernalia that surrounded the removal of Franco’s remains in 2019 on a day whose climate of tension was heated the previous days by devotees of the regime. On the contrary. The descendants anticipated any government action and as soon as the regulation was approved, they communicated their intention to exhume it, requesting a planning permit from the San Lorenzo de El Escorial City Council.
Despite being an express request from the family, the Francisco Franco National Foundation has described the exhumation of the remains of the founder of the Falange, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, as a “ruinous and civil war action by the Government” and has described the president as of it, Pedro Sánchez, as the “undisputed world champion of infamy” for his “miserable” action.
The new Law of Democratic Memory establishes in its article 54 that in the renamed Valley of Cuelgamuros “only the mortal remains of people who died as a result of the War may lie, as a place of recognition, commemoration, remembrance and homage to the victims buried there”. being relocated “any mortal remains that occupy a pre-eminent place in the enclosure”, as in the case of Primo de Rivera and before that of Franco.
And, although there was the legal possibility of keeping his remains in one of the crypts attached to the temple, the family of the founder of the Falange chose to take them to a Catholic cemetery, given that the regulations consider all burials in the enclave as a civil cemetery.
The Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, has defined this transfer as “one more step in the redefinition” of the Valley of the Fallen so that “no person, no ideology that evokes the dictatorship is glorified there.”
This is a complex process, provided for in the Democratic Memory Law, which covers various areas, from the new status of the Benedictine community of the monastery, to the transformation of the site into an interpretation center on Francoism.
All this without forgetting that in Valle de Cuelgamuros lie the remains of 33,833 people, combatants from both sides of the Civil War, a third unidentified, and that there are descendants who want to take care of their relatives; but exhumations have been subjected to numerous obstacles in recent decades, both political and judicial.
Last December, the Government finally resumed work to recover the remains of 118 victims claimed by their families, after a stoppage of several months ordered by a court in Madrid. The removal of the 3,500-kilo granite tombstone that covers the Primo de Rivera grave and its replacement with six black marble slabs similar to the one on the floor that surrounds it has been budgeted at 8,630 euros.