Spain, Palacio de Los Velada in Ávila

Having finished our tour of El Escorial we left and returned to the town of Guadarrama passing for a second time the Valley of the Fallen but this time not trying to make an uninvited appearance and then we took the quick route underneath the mountain via a tunnel rather than over the top and then a toll motorway towards the city of Ávila where we would be staying at the four star Palacio de Los Velada hotel.

Kim and I had stayed here before on a previous trip and it was so good we had wished it had been for longer than the one night stop over so we were pleased to be returning now for a longer stay. We parked the car in an underground car park outside the city walls and walked to the hotel which is in a perfect location right in the City’s Cathedral Square and we checked into our rooms.

It was about six o’clock and we needed some alcohol that was cheaper tan the mini-bar selection so while the others settled in I left the hotel in search of a mini-market. I walked an awful long way in an unsuccessful pursuit because although there were shops of all types inside and outside the walls I simply couldn’t find what I was looking for. I had almost given up all hope and was returning to the hotel and the overpriced mini-bar when I chanced upon a tiny grocery store and inside there were a few cans of the Spanish beer Mahou and some cartons of cheap red wine which I snapped up and took back to the room.

Where there was a shock in store because there was the most awful racket coming from somewhere in the hotel which filled the room with loud invasive music which made it impossible to relax. Kim went to complain and came back with the good news that the hotel would move us and she had inspected a quieter room in a different part of the hotel so we packed our bags, exchanged the room keys and transferred to the alternative room which just so happened to be on the next floor directly above the first room and, as it turned out, just as noisy, which I found extremely amusing and gave me a good laugh at her expense.

Later we met in the hotel lounge which was the old Palace open courtyard but covered now and laid out with white furniture on a black and white tiled floor and with the two storeys of the hotel surrounding it on all four sides but with running balconies making it feel open and spacious. We stayed for a drink or two and then rejecting the expensive hotel restaurant walked out into the streets in search of somewhere to eat.

It was quite cool outside because Ávila is over a thousand metres above sea level and is the highest provincial capital in Spain. It is built on the flat summit of a rocky hill, which rises abruptly in the midst of a wilderness; a brown, arid, treeless table-land, strewn with immense grey boulders, and shut in on all sides by lofty mountains and this produces an extreme climate with very hard and long winters and relatively short summers.

Wandering through the main squares and back streets there were a number of places to choose from and we eventually agreed on a quiet place tucked into a corner of a small square where the staff seemed pleased to see us because I think we were the first customers of the evening. The food was adequate but not especially thrilling but at least we got through it without any dining disasters (no sea food nasties or that sort of thing) and when we had finished there were complimentary local liqueurs, which I always find very hospitable and then on account of an early start and a very long day we went back to the Palacio de Los Velada for a last drink and an early night.

Spain, Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen)

The route from Manzanares El Real to El Escorial took us to the foothills of the Sierra Guadarrama mountain range and directly past one of the few remaining reminders of the Franco regime, the Valle de los Caídos. The Valley of the Fallen is a shallow green basin tucked into the folds of the mountain about fifty kilometres north of central Madrid. It is the controversial last resting place of the dictator General Francisco Franco who conceived this place for himself out of his own arrogance and conceit. For almost forty years the Generalíssimo was someone that Spaniards could not escape from. He was there in school books, church prayers, statues, plaques, street names and thousands of other reminders of a violent insurrection that led to a vicious civil war. Now though his face and name are being erased from public view and even the army, where nostalgia for the dictator survived long after his death in 1975, has pledged to remove all plaques, statues and monuments to the regime of a man it once revered.

From the entrance gate there is a five kilometre drive to the monument on a road that passes through lush vegetation of tall pines punctuated by a scattering of oak, ilex and poplar trees and which passes over a couple of elegant stone bridges and at the top is the most recent piece of fascist religious monumental architecture to have been erected in western Europe. A huge blue-grey granite cross soars one hundred and fifty metres into the sky which on a clear day can be seen from the centre of Madrid and no wonder because it is supposed to be the largest in the World. Below the cross are a series of arches overlooking a wide featureless concrete esplanade and beyond the galleries is the entrance to the basilica through two modest bronze doors.

The floor is made of granite and black marble and above it there is an interior dome lined in gold mosaic. The basilica is longer than St Peter’s in Rome and almost as high and is built to dimensions that matched the mountainous ego of its creator. Officially it is a war memorial in remembrance of all those who perished in the Spanish civil war and a symbol of forgiveness and peace but the monument has never actually managed to achieve this worthy status because it was built partly by using Republican prisoners as labourers and the grim intimidating monument has always been seen rather as a symbol of the victory of the Nationalists.

Today the monument is an embarrassment to the State and successive Spanish governments have agonised over what to do with it. Since 2004 the left-leaning government, which has been following a policy of the removal of Francoist symbols from public buildings and spaces, has had an uneasy relationship with a monument that is the most conspicuous legacy from Franco’s rule.

In November 2009, Patrimonio Nacional, who manages the building, suddenly and controversially ordered the closure of the basilica for an indefinite period of time, citing as a reason deterioration and preservation issues which may affect the cross and compromise some of the sculptures. These allegations have been contested by technical experts and the religious community that lives in the complex, and had been seen by some conservative opinion groups as a policy of harassment against the monument, an opinion reinforced when in 2010 the Pieta sculpture group started to be ‘dismantled’ with hammers and heavy machinery.

Every year on the first Saturday after the 20th November, the day of the death of Franco, old hard-line Fracoists attend a religious ceremony, which is really a massive political rally, at the monument in his memory and this annual gathering of fascists is also an embarrassment to the government and to most of modern Spain.

We had read that the monument was closed but the gate was open so we swung inside anyway and pulled up beside the pay kiosk at the entrance where a middle aged lady explained that the monument wasn’t open and we should leave. I followed some cars and drove on expecting to find a turning point but after a kilometre it was obvious there wasn’t one and the cars we were following were authorised to be there so I did a three point turn instead next to two vertical granite columns at either side of the road.

What we hadn’t known about was the significance of the 20th November and being only a week away this must have been making the people on the gate a bit nervous because as we drove down we passed the woman from the kiosk who was pursuing us in a red Seat and who waved frantically to us as we drove by. Political rallies in celebration of the former dictator are now banned by the Law of Historical Memory, voted on by the Congress of Deputies in October 2007 and it seems that the authorities are anticipating extra trouble this year in response to the closure of the monument and back at the gate two burly guards were shaking their heads and giving disapproving grimaces. I gave my best socialist smile and made pathetic gestures of apology but then left as quickly as possible and rejoined the road to El Escorial where we hoped we might be made to feel more welcome.