ACI Prensa Staff, Mar 28, 2024 / 10:30 am
The Association for Reconciliation and Historical Truth has garnered more than 130,000 signatures on a petition calling for the Madrid regional government to protect the Valley of the Fallen as an asset of cultural interest (BIC, by its Spanish acronym) in opposition to the socialist government’s plans to desacralize and reconfigure the area’s historical significance.
In the petition, which is posted in Spanish on HazteOir’s web portal, the petition’s promoters explain that “the social-communist government has put the machinery in motion to destroy the Valley of the Fallen and transform it into a “museum” of horrors by rewriting history with falsehoods, blaming one side for all the evils [of the 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War] and hiding the crimes of the other.”
Two years ago, the Madrid regional government, headed by President Isabel Díaz Ayuso of the People’s Party, refused to declare the area as a BIC on the basis that the regional Heritage Law prevented it. “After updating the Heritage Law and running out of excuses, she’s still not keeping her word,” the association charges.
The Valley of the Fallen is a monumental complex that has previously been designated as a national heritage site. It was built in the Madrid mountains after the Spanish Civil War with the intention of serving as a center for reconciliation and for the interment of combatants from both sides of the conflict.