In Spain, no more memorial Mass for Franco at politically charged burial site

No more memorial Mass in Spain for Franco

MADRID — The basilica where Francisco Franco is buried has canceled the politically charged tradition of holding a memorial Mass to mark the anniversary of the Spanish dictator’s death, a monk said Monday.

The Mass at the Valley of the Fallen outside Madrid was usually held around Nov. 20, the anniversary of Franco’s death in 1975, and drew gatherings of far rightists nostalgic for Franco’s nearly four-decade rule.

A law passed in December 2007 specifically outlaws political rallies at the Valley of the Fallen, which features a 150-meter tall (500-foot) granite cross and for many Spaniards is their country’s most divisive and potent reminder of the Franco era.

Starting this year, Mass will be held Nov. 3 in memory of all those who died in the 1936-39 Civil War that Franco’s fascist forces won, said Anselmo Alvarez. He is the abbot of the Benedictine community overseeing the basilica, which houses Franco’s tomb and is part of the sprawling memorial site carved into the side of a mountain.

The bodies of more than 30,000 people who died in the war are also buried at the site.

“This place does not seem conceived for eulogies or nostalgia,” Alvarez wrote in an opinion piece published Monday in the newspaper ABC.

Rather, he said, the monks at the basilica “pray for and with all of Spain so that the hostility of (the wartime period) transforms into longing for peace.”