The Zapatero government has channeled its leftist rabble rousing through a policy referred to as “memoria historica,” sometimes referred to as “memoria histerica” by people who don’t share it.
Zapatero used to go around telling the sad (and largely fictional) story of his grandfather who was on the side of the Communists (oh, excuse me, that would be “Republicans”), blah, blah, blah. He has spent a fortune renaming streets, tearing down statues, rewriting textbooks, and carrying on a campaign of vilification and revenge against the few people who still survive from those years.
The Valley of the Fallen has long been a target of his. There is a Benedictine monastery at the site, and they celebrate masses there on a regular basis, with a particularly huge event on November 25, the date of Franco’s death. The Mass said for national reconciliation and it is normally attended by thousands of people.
For the last couple of years, Zapatero has closed the site, first claiming that the huge underground church was unsafe, and then announcing that it was not legal to have religious services there. The monks simply moved outside and continued to have the masses out of doors, in the snow and wind, and people still came. This place is up in the mountains outside of Madrid and the weather gets quite severe.
Zapatero has done such a lousy job that he has lost the confidence even of his party and new elections (without him as a candidate) have been called for November. So this latest attack on the Valley of the Fallen is a combination of one last parting gesture and an attempt to stir up a little electoral hatred and bloodlust in the left.
something perhaps we shall see in America?
Thanks livius.