The exhumation of the remains of the founder of the Falange, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, from the Cuelgamuros Valley has cost €8,360. This is the figure that emerges from the building permit granted by the San Lorenzo del Escorial City Council for the removal of the 3,500-kilo granite tombstone that covers the grave and its replacement with six black marble slabs similar to the one on the ground.
The remains of Primo de Rivera have been transferred this morning from the Cuelgamuros Valley, where they were deposited 64 years ago, to the San Isidro cemetery in Madrid. The extraction of the coffin has been consummated discreetly, with the temple closed to the public, only in the presence of the relatives and the workers in charge of raising the great slab that covers his grave and without journalists. This is an operation that complies with one of the sections of the Democratic Memory Law of 2022.
The prior of the Benedictine abbey, Santiago Cantera, has been in charge of pronouncing a response before the coffin left the mausoleum for San Isidro, where after its cremation the remains will be deposited along with those of other relatives, such as his brothers Miguel and Pilar.
The entire process has been undertaken in agreement with the family and has been exempt from the enormous media expectation and political controversy that in 2019 accompanied the exhumation and subsequent transfer by helicopter of the dictator Francisco Franco, also buried next to the main altar of the basilica since 1975. .
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”. . And he adds: “Any mortal remains that occupy a prominent place in the enclosure will be relocated.” This is the case of José Antonio Primo de Rivera and before that it was the case of Franco.
Although there was the legal possibility of keeping his remains in one of the crypts attached to the temple, thus removing them from their prominent location, the family opted to take them to a Catholic cemetery, given that the regulations consider all burials in the enclave as a civil cemetery.
Moreover, the descendants anticipated any government action for the relocation and as soon as the regulation was approved they communicated their intention to exhume it, both to the prior of the Valley of the Fallen and to the Community of Madrid, at the same time that they requested the works permit. to the City Council of San Lorenzo de El Escorial.