El valle de los caidos / Monasterio de El Escorial

In the middle of a plague of work in my job, I decided to do some tourism around Madrid. In fact, one of the reasons of taking my car from Mallorca to Madrid was to use it not only to go to work, and to go to my Sunday's Soccer Matches with my Pantaleon team, but also to do some things that imply activities far from home and which take a lot of time in public transportation.

And it was March and I had never used my car for tourism purposes. So I decided that this was the time. And the motivation was the opportunity to go for one morning to visit the beautiful Monasterio de El Escorial. But coincidentally, in our way there was another 'interesting' monument and we took the chance to visit them both. It is quite a reasonable visit which can take up to 4 or 6 hours. The motivation was that we had a free weekend. We, the group, was composed by:

1. Roopali, a very hardworking friend and work-mate who had the difficult responsability of dealing with the most problematic half (at the time) part of the application we were developing.
2. Shiraz, a good old friend who dealt with the other half, and many other issues we had around. He, who is engaged (going to marry soon! Congrats again! And Best Wishes!) is one of the hardest working people I know, and we have been working together for almost 2 years (or should I say against each other? JUST KIDDING!).
   

Initially Nitu was supposed to come with us, but work and unknown reasons kept her at home, while the three of us went to discover some spots around Madrid.

The choosen day was the 27th of March. The time was 9. They arrived at 10. I was expecting that anyway. And we left for our first stop.

The day was clear and sunny. We had good vibrations (appart from my music in the car)...

Arriving to or first stop took us almost 1h and a half. Meanwhile, Shiraz was taking photografs, and Roopali, in the back seat of the car was talking with me and Shiraz about many things, such as her upcoming marriage, their vision of Spain, their vision of the job, and many many many other things. I must admit once more that both of them are wonderful people. Very very nice people. But the reason of this post is to narrate our excursion.

In this picture you can see both Shiraz and Roopali with our first destination as the background: "El Valle de los Caídos" (The valley of the fallen) (Wikipedia). This monumental structure reminds most of the population of this country of one of the blackest and saddest periods of his history. The Civil War and the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco.

In 1932 the left-winged parties won the elections in Spain. Then the Government mode was a Republic, without Crown, nor Kings. But the military, some religious people and specially the most conservative wing of the population revolved against the elected governments. This evolved into a Civil War won by the conservative and fascist people, with help from Mussolini (the italian dictator) and Hitler (do you know him?).

The following 30 years were years of repression for the minorities, of disrespect for the difference, and of disconnection from the rest of the world. The only good thing is that prevented us from entering the Second World War. After that came the 'so-called' political transition which lead from the death of the dictator to the beggining of a 'so-called' democratic era, which lasts until today.

The Valley of the Fallen was a very big monument built by the Dictator Francisco Franco as an hommage to all the soldiers who fighted for the country. Obviously it only considered all those who fighted at his side, forgetting that all the people who died on the other side, were also fighting for what they believed was the best option for the country. Nowadays, it is (at least for me) a reminder of how absurd are concepts such as war, or country boundaries.

In the photos you can see how big is the structure seen from far-away. It consists essentially on a cross-based enormous church built on the top of a hill with a wonderful view of the valley under it. You can see in this picture the valley, Roopali and me.
The top of the hill, as it is usual in the catholic christian conception of arquitecture, there must be always the cross representing the monotheist god. This has a simple explanation: they knew how impressionable is the ignorant human being, so they wanted the faithful people, whenever that they looked at the sky, to see that god (represented by the cross) was always the highest thing around. Maybe one of the first uses of sub-consciousness manipulation for marketing purposes of history. It is sincerely impressive to feel the magnitude of the 'so-called' monument. It is really really big. Another use of the sub-conciousness: you feel small... Insignificant. The other interpretation of the reason was done by Roopali, very intelligently:
- Such a big construction reveals that the person that designed it had some kind of self-esteem problem, of complex with his hight.
I explained to her, surprised by the accuracy of her comment, that the Dictator Francisco Franco was indeed a quite small person.

Nowadays, the monument is a kind of pilgrimage spot for those who still live looking back melancholically at strong repression, racism, fascism, and complete lack of rights (for poor people)...

Nowadays, there are a lot of stupid people that still does not understand the difference between progress, freedom, and social rights.

And despite my friends who thing that this monument should be demolished. I strongly believe that it must be kept as a shame monument, to help everybody remember that war, that hate lead to nothing. They are completely absurd.

Our next stop was, in fact, our real destination. And it was, indeed far more interesting, but unluckily, taking photographs at the inside was not allowed, so we only could take pictures of the exterior of the 'Monasterio de El Escorial' (El Escorial Monastery) (Wikipedia).


The Monastery (see pictures) was built by the king Phillip II of Spain, to serve as both royal residence and meditation retirement, as he was a highly faithful person. In addition, Phillip II made a royal cript (Pantheon) inside it, to include all the dinasty of his father. There is a special entrace to it, but it is worth it as it is one of the best spots of the Monastery.

Nowadays part of the Monastery is still used by a tribe of monks that live there and even teach a bunch of students, which also learn choral singing. They are famous in the country. The rest of the Monastery is currently a museum. That is the part we visited. And it is a visit which is worth it. But as I don't have any pictures, I will only say that it combined some rooms as they were in the era of Phillip II, with some rooms dedicated to objects belonging to the Monastery or to the Dinasty.

I enjoyed the visit very much. But the capricious weather decided to end completely opposite to the beggining. The clear and sunny day evolved into a cloudly and rainy dark day.. Which invited us to return home, calmly but in my case at least happy of having shared such a wonderful time with such lovely persons such as Shiraz and Roopali.

Both of them are going to marry soon. I'm sure that they will make happy they respective couples. And they will keep on being very good and hard workers. Always ready to help. Always ready to give you a smile.

I miss them! Good luck!



PS: There are many things I've haven't said about the Valley of the Fallen (Valle de los Caidos), such as the fact that currently it is a tomb for a dictator and tiran of the Spanish history (Franco), and for Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, (son of another big Spanish dictator and tiran) founder of the "La Falange Española", such as the fact that Franco used all the war prisoners and political dissidents as slaves to build it, and unpleasant things like that... Anyway they are included in the wikipedia articles or in other web resources, so I decided to focus on giving an overall idea of our trip.