The Government plans to present in June the urbanization project linked to the resignification of the Valley of the Fallen, a decision that coincides with Pope Leo XIV’s visit to Spain and represents a new step in the intervention on one of the country’s most significant religious sites.
June, chosen in parallel to the Pope’s trip
The Executive has set June to unveil the plan that will allow the execution of the ‘The base and the cross’ project, winner of the contest called to transform the site.
The timing is no coincidence: the announcement will take place on the same dates as Leo XIV’s apostolic trip to Spain, from June 6 to 12, adding a strong symbolic component to an action that directly affects a place of worship of the Church.
The Government prepares to overcome local opposition
The Secretary of State for Democratic Memory, Fernando Martínez, has mentioned that the San Lorenzo de El Escorial City Council, governed by PP and Vox, might try to halt the project.
However, the Executive has already anticipated that it will use legal mechanisms to avoid any blockage. “We will go directly to one of the powers that the Council of Ministers has so that no one obstructs the works,” he stated, making clear the Government’s intention to proceed with the intervention.
The Valley, a religious site under intervention
The action in the Valley of the Fallen has become one of the central axes of the Executive’s memory policy, with a project that aims to alter the meaning of a site that houses a basilica and retains a profound religious significance.
During the April Plenary Assembly press conference of the CEE, the bishops’ general secretary, Mons. César García Magán, recalled that the basilica of the Holy Cross of the Valley of the Fallen fully retains its ecclesial status. “The basilica remains a basilica, so canon law remains in force”.
The DNA bank and the debate on memory
In parallel, the Government is promoting the creation of a state DNA bank linked to the Democratic Memory Law, intended to collect genetic profiles of victims of the Civil War and cases related to the so-called stolen babies.
In this context, recent reports from the National Institute of Toxicology have questioned the existence of a systematic newborn theft network in Spain, as they found no forensic evidence to support that widespread hypothesis.
A moment of maximum symbolic weight
In this context, the choice of these dates does not go unnoticed and reinforces the perception that the advance of the so-called “resignification” responds to a carefully calculated strategy, in a scenario of maximum international and ecclesial visibility, as it affects a place that is not only part of Spain’s recent history but continues to be a reference space for the Catholic faith.
Sources: Infobae / El Debate