Monday, August 22, 2011

Spain's Sacred Soil: Valle de Los Caídos

Know of this sacred place. Located just outside Madrid - a special and sacred place. Thousands of Catholics were killed in Spain during the 1930s - killed by socialists. See here and visit one day on pilgrimage.

12 comments:

  1. this "sacred site" was built by forced labour.

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  2. Quite a lot indeed, at the behest of the murderous dictator who lies rotting in this 'sacred' place.

    Presumably, the 2,000 unmarked mass graves dotted around the country are insufficiently worthy of the attention of a man of JP's refined sensibilities ...

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  3. Stupid comment. Catholic Spain defended itself against the international Left, which was poised to take complete control of the state and of society. Popes Pius XI and Pius XII supported General Franco enthusiastically.
    The Valle de los Caidos is in any case dedicated to all the dead of the civil war.
    It must remain inviolate, and that means that Franco's tomb must remain there too.

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  4. Notably, as has been until recently, propaganda and legitimacy has long been on the republican side. If there is something one can say about tha last spanish Civil War, it would be that it is the war that has spent more ink to say the least ammount of truth. The real aid to Franco came after he reached Madrid in 1937. That was when the soviets really pumped in weapons and when Hitler decided to aid Franco in earnest. Up until then it was the republicans who had the dominion of the skyes and who did most of the bombing. My maternal grnadmother served as a volunteer nurse in Valladolid and saw most of the killings they made. Half portuguese and half spanish, she also survived the raiding of her house, although it blenoged to the portuguese embassy, and had to flee Madrid during the summer of 1936. If that is the legitimacy Mr. anonymous defends he is thus portrayed. Actually Franco almost won with weapons rejected by the enemy, like the "Chauchat" french machine guns, he almost ended the war in 1937 on a shoestring budget. The real Guernica story is not what the Picasso painting and other propaganda hailed as truth. Many scoundrels like Mr. Hemingway, wrote lies and rather inventively about it because it was more fashionable to be a revolutionary, although it meant the banning of Catholicism in Spain. Actually the greater part of the world soon saw that, thus they lost support in the USA, United Kingdom etc. The funny thing about it all is that Franco allways had good relations with the british as well as the germans. Hitler sold him Me-109 planes but without the engine, so Franco managed to buy the best engine there was at the time, the Rolls Royce aviation engine the last year of the war. The modifications that where necessary to the aiframe(the engine turned in the opposite direction) resulted in what was described, by the very Willy Messerschmitt in his later years,as the best plane Hitler could have had. He said that if Hitler had had the "Buchón" plane and the spanish pilots, he would have won the Battle of Brittain.
    One my great grand uncles was a portuguese volunteer pilot in the "Viriatos" fighting for Franco. So bad where the stakes against them that it was considered a suicide squad.

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  5. Mr Anonymous, Sonnen is referring to the thousands of catholics murdered in Spain, mostly since 1930, but also in the first quarter of the XX century only because they where catholics and while the was apparently a lawful and internationally recognized government. This and many other atrocities led to the upraising against the II Spanish Republic. It would be very long to write all down in a few lines, but bear in mind that the last Spanish Republican regime was imposed and not voted, after King Alfonso XIII had his own and his family's life threatened by the socialists. Fearing waht happened to the Romanoff in Russia, he fled into exile and the Jesuits where dissolved in Spain by the Government.
    The uprisen had most of the officials and petty army officers on their side, as well as important number or active soldiers. The republicans mostly irregular militia (who did not have served in compulsory military service) and Generals (a political rank in Spain). History is full of examples of what happens when one gives power and weapons to an uneducated mass of violent pacifists, living oxymorons on two feet: they make the biggest atrocities one can imagine and so it happened in Spain.

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  6. If any can read spanish, as an introductory book, "El Terror Rojo en España" by José Javier Esparza, ISBN: 9788496840041 Is an excellent choice away from the political leftist bias and ignorance we have suffered until recently. It was actually recently that a former maoist and marxist historian and convicted terrorist, Pío Moa, who documented in his books the looting an crimes that where the cause of the Civil War. His books "Los mitos de la Guerra Civil" and " los orígenes de la Guerra Civil" are well documented and not too big like Salas-LArrazabal etc.

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  7. I see that the socialists have conducted their historical revisionist policies very well, not one word on Spain's government websites on the massacre of Catholics, priests and nuns that did happen during the socialist reign of terror before the nationalist uprising. The Spanish youth of today have been taught to hate the Franco regime, with many historical distortions.
    Glad that there were Catholics who fought against those red thugs, a nice example for us today...as JP said, to know history is to be Catholic! C'est tout!!!

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  8. ¡Viva Franco! ¡Arriba España!

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  9. The site was NOT built with forced unpaid labour. If there is one thing one can say about Franco's regime is that they produced books and ledgers an this monument in particular has invoices for just about every peseta (penny) spent. Leas than a third of the workers were convicts and they redeemed their sentences as a payment of their work. They had better medical assistance than the ordinary worker, they had ambulances, better than average food, a cliic, etc. You where considered lucky If you worked there because of the bicho wages and good working conditions. The security around the convicts was quite relaxed and very few did escape. Some of them continued working there after the end of their sentences with full salary . It's all very well documented.

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  10. To know more about Pio Moa check http://www.newspanishbooks.com/author/p-o-moa

    Also worth lookig at if one has the time are the works of César Vidal on the subject, Rafael García Serrano and Ricardo de la Cierva.

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  11. On november 2010 the current socialist government of Spain, banned the masses inside the basilica of the Valle de los caídos, and disrupted some tombs ilegally without the mandatory order issued by a judge. The answer was that people would still go under snow, rain or bone chilling fog. You can get a glimpse here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zokgSPD00Co It also resulted in 10km traffic jams. Recently, a few months ago, they reopened the basilica and one can attend mass inside the temple on sundays at 11:00am

    If you look closely at this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD_oc_zGNRQ&feature=relmfu , even if you can not speak spanish, you can sense the biass in the media and notice clearly notice that the last person interviewed, an extreme left activist, gets the greatest attention (over 5 minutes out of the total 6). hE even calls for the blowing up and complete removal of the cross. He says that it's a meeting point of fascists and neo-nazis and erected to the glory of Franco, while it is pretty plain clear that it isn't and there is no obvious biass or glorification of fascism. Franco died in 1975 but it has only been in the last 4 years that the extreme left has demonstrated in front of the temple entrance on Franco's anniversary. The government need to generate this kind of agitation because of the crisis and the poor ballot expectations they are receiving.

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  12. All I'll say is, that I once had a biography of an artist I admired who was born in Spain ( she fled when Franco took over ), and whose paintings I thought were lovely. However, when I read that her French husband supported the killing of priests during the "civil" war, I threw the book away. No amont of beauty can make up for such ugliness.away.

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