Ávila and Its Environs, El Valle de los Caídos, and Little Miracles

Ana and her family used to rent an apartment in a small town called Burgohondo in the province of Ávila, one of the regions of Castilla-León, which is one of the autonomous communities of Spain that I have visited the most and that I find the most stunning. A long time ago, Ana and I made tentative plans to go visit Ávila one day, and when we realized how little time we have left together, we decided that last weekend was our ideal time to go. We drove up to the city of Ávila first, which was a rather brief drive from Madrid, and I was instantly struck by the perfectly intact wall that surrounds the entire old part of the city. Many people talk about how incredible the wall around Toledo is, but Ávila's is, in my opinion, by far the best that I have seen. I don't have any great photo that shows how truly stunning the wall is when seen from afar, but this photo at least captures enough of it that its length, continuity, and immaculate state of preservation can be extrapolated from the photo.

Ávila is famous for being the place where Santa Teresa received her visions of Jesus and where San Juan de la Cruz (Saint John of the Cross) also received his heavenly raptures that he later converted into poetic verse. I remember reading in high school a Freudian interpretation of one of Teresa's dreams in which she is pierced by a spear held by Jesus, and the interpretation obviously connected the spear with the phallus, the piercing with penetration, and talked about Teresa's celibate life as a nun. I don't know much more about either individual, but my interest is piqued and I will do more research about them in the future.

Next, Ana and I went to dip our toes into the river that runs through Burgohondo. We only spent a short amount of time there, but it was a pleasant repose in a peaceful, fluvial environment.

 

We then headed for a place called Valle de las Iruelas, a serene, sylvan place right on a reservoir known as El Burguillo, and there Ana, Vega and I spent the night in a small cabin that we rented for the evening. The cabin had a fireplace, so we lit the fire despite the heat and made a nice, simple dinner that we all enjoyed. When dinner was finished and Vega was fast asleep, Ana and I had our book club and discussed El amor en los tiempos del cólera (Love in the Time of Cholera), our book club selection of the month. We had a fruitful discussion about this novel written by Gabriel García Márquez in which a man named Florentino Ariza falls in love with Fermina Daza and knows that she is the love of his life. Though she marries another man and he spends years of his life making love to other women, the two end up together when they are older and the novel is, in that sense, one with a somewhat traditional happy ending. It was an interesting read, and it fueled my desire to continue to deepen my understanding of Hispanic and Spanish literature. I still prefer Gabriel García Márquez's short stories, but it was great to read one of his most popular and acclaimed novels.

Ana, Vega, and I spent our time hiking around the forest and the lakeside of the reservoir. It was a warm, completely tranquil environment, and it was a wonderful place to relax and enjoy good conversation. We returned to Madrid on Sunday afternoon, refreshed and ready for another week at school.

 

As Ana said, this is a great photo of me
with my youngest student

My next adventure in Spain was one that I have been interested in having for quite awhile. Before I tell you about it, let me give you a brief chronology. I work in the northern part of the Comunidad de Madrid, the autonomous community that houses the capital of Spain. Since I live in the center of the capital, I catch a bus every morning to go out to work, and I always noticed from the bus an enormous stone cross up on the mountainside near where I work. I always figured that it was a Christian monastery or something of the sort, but after asking about it, I quickly learned the truth of its construction and what it symbolizes. I have done more research and learned much more about the monument, and I finally got the chance to visit it this weekend. Below I will explain in more detail.

The enormous cross on the mountainside is a monastery of sorts, but I was only half-right in my guess. The cross sits a little ways up the mountain from a monastery, and the entire zone, with all of the buildings and such, is known as El Valle de los Caídos, "The Valley of the Fallen." It is essentially an enormous cross, a Christian symbol representing the death of Jesus and the expiation of humankind's sins, as well as a monastery for religious services, an abbey where monks live, and enormous esplanades of austere granite. It sits alone on the mountainside and is next to nothing but pristine landscapes. From its elevated position, it has some of the most beautiful views of the Comunidad de Madrid, and all of it is in virgen, beautiful forest teeming with wildlife and towering pines and holm oaks. And all of it was built under Francisco Franco, Spain's dictator from 1939 to 1975, by the slave labor of the Republicans, the people who lost the Civil War to Franco's Nationalists.

When I told people that I was going to visit the Valley of the Fallen, I got by far the most acerbic comments, or the most sarcastic comebacks, or the most troubled of faces that I have ever received in Spain. Multiple Spaniards told me simply not to go there. One called it "dead ugly" and recommended that I go see El Escorial instead, a granite castle built by Felipe II that I have visited 3 times since I find it so compelling. One of my friends, Félix, got properly upset and told me that going there supported the monument by giving it my money, my time, and my attention. It was unbelievable how much negativity the monument gets, and I understand why. I tried to put myself into the mind and heart of a Spaniard, and I am sure that I would feel the same. Many of these people saw their families entirely split in the Civil War. Brothers deceived, tricked, and killed brothers. People had their mother taken out of the house by the opposite side, saw her get raped, then shot, and then thrown into a ditch on the side of the road. Many people are still unaccounted for because they are in roadside graves like this. Even Federico García Lorca, easily Spain's best playwright of the last century of one of their best of all time, was shot by the Nationalists for being gay and liberal and has been yet to be dug up and properly interred. This is a very fresh wound for Spain, as the dictatorship and its regime of terror only ended in 1975.


I went to the Valley with the technology teacher at my school, Laura, as well as two other English teaching assistants and my friend Ana. The monument is absolutely stunning in proportions and in its twisted beauty. It is a spartan place, made mostly of monotone stone, everything in large proportions, stately, towering.

Laura also had very strong opinions. As we were driving there, she told me that she refused to enter the monastery where Franco is buried, saying "que se pudra sin mi visita," meaning "let him rot without me visiting him." It was an experience charged with emotion. Once I was actually up there, I was stunned at how impressively large and domineering the architecture is. The monastery where Franco is buried felt like the Chamber of Secrets from Harry Potter or something. There were enormous statues of angels who looked like they were made of bronze-turned-emerald-patina, muscular men with wings holding scythes and swords. The monastery was one enormous room with high, rocky ceilings left craggy and unpolished and a long, echoing corridor that led to the alter behind which Franco is buried. A simple bouquet of spring-flowers adorned his grave, a stone tablet inlaid in the ground that simple said "Francisco Franco." I was unfortunately unable to take photos or else I would have captured the magnificent cupola, with its mosaic depicting the lives of Catholic saints in intricate details with small glass tiles, the enormous central nave with its stern stone walls and the occasional biblical tapestry adorning them, and the other sights of the haunting place. Instead, you all just have to trust my interpretation or make a visit there yourself. If anyone is interested, I also recommend Ghosts of Spain: Travels through a Country's Hidden Past by Giles Tremlett for more information on the Valley of the Fallen, the Spanish Civil War, or anything of the sort. I haven't finished the book yet, but it's been a riveting read so far.

Part of what is so disturbing about the Valley of the Fallen is that it is currently used by neo-Nazis, pro-Franco franquistas, and Spanish fascists as a site to pay homage to the deceased former dictator and his ideology. Unlike Holocaust museums in Dachau or Auschwitz that exist as a reminder of the horrors of the ethnic cleansing and mass slaughter that happened there and a call for these things never to be repeated, the Valley of the Fallen still has Franco's fascist coat of arms/symbol on its buildings. The official placard says that it is a memorial to those who died in the Civil War, but given that the dictator built it by the forced, torturous labor of the other side (many of the workers starved and died from cold exposure), one can see why it's more polemical and less peachy than that. It was a very intense visit, and one well worth it to me, though I hope that all of my Spanish friends know that I am neither passively supporting Franco nor trying to dig into Spain's painful past by my actions. I just felt it would be a shame not to visit this place given how close it is to where I work.

The rest of my life has been good. My friends have already begun to return to the US. Colin went back to start working for Teach for America. Ali goes in less than two weeks to work for the Obama campaign in Colorado. It's amazing how quickly we're all moving on with our post-Spain lives! I've got a few more weeks, and I'm going to keep juicing them for all they're worth!