The Valley of the Fallen was Franco's grandest construction project. Built between 1940 and 1958, it consists of a massive basilica carved into the granite of the Sierra de Guadarrama, topped by a 150-meter stone cross visible for miles. The monument was officially dedicated to the memory of those who died on both sides of the Civil War, but its construction relied heavily on the forced labor of Republican political prisoners. Franco was interred there after his death in November 1975, buried behind the main altar alongside Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falange, Spain's fascist party. For many Spaniards, particularly those whose relatives were among the approximately 33,000 Civil War dead interred in the basilica's mass crypts -- many without their families' knowledge or consent -- the Valley was not a place of reconciliation but a monument to the victors that forced the defeated to share their tomb.

In 2011, an Expert Commission formed under Prime Minister Zapatero's government recommended removing Franco's remains, arguing that someone who did not die in the Civil War should not occupy the monument's most honored position. The recommendation came nine days after the conservative Popular Party won a landslide election, and the new government of Mariano Rajoy refused to act. What followed was a parliamentary trench war that stretched across nearly a decade. Motion after motion was introduced -- by the Socialists, the Basque Nationalists, the Catalan parties -- and each was voted down or ignored by the PP majority. The arguments repeated themselves in cycles: the opposition invoked historical justice and the dignity of Civil War victims, while the PP cited a lack of consensus, economic priorities, and the principle of letting the past remain undisturbed. The Church added complexity, insisting that any action inside the basilica required ecclesiastical authorization.

The impasse broke in June 2018 when Pedro Sanchez became prime minister after a successful no-confidence vote against Rajoy. Sanchez announced his intention to exhume Franco, but with only 85 deputies in a parliament of 350, he needed coalition support and a legal path through the Franco family's objections, the Benedictine community's protests, and the Church's jurisdictional claims. The government amended the 2007 Historical Memory Law to permit the exhumation. The Franco family fought it through the Supreme Court, arguing the decree was unconstitutional and requesting reburial at the Cathedral of La Almudena in central Madrid -- a request the government denied on grounds of public order. On September 24, 2019, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of exhumation. A month later, on October 24, Franco's coffin was carried out of the basilica by his grandchildren, who shouted 'Viva Espana! Viva Franco!' as they lowered it into a hearse. A helicopter flew the remains to Mingorrubio Cemetery in El Pardo, where Franco was reburied beside his wife, Carmen Polo.

One detail from the reburial ceremony captured Spain's tangled relationship with its past more than any parliamentary speech. The Franco family chose Ramón Tejero, a parish priest, to say Mass at the reinterment. Tejero's father was Antonio Tejero, the Civil Guard lieutenant colonel who stormed the Spanish Parliament with armed men during the failed military coup of February 23, 1981 -- the most serious threat to Spanish democracy since Franco's death. That the family of a dictator would select the son of a would-be putschist to consecrate the reburial suggested that for some Spaniards, the old loyalties had not faded so much as gone quiet. Franco now lies in a municipal cemetery rather than a national monument, but the arguments about what Spain owes its past -- and what it should be permitted to forget -- continue.