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At the end of February the right-wing government of the community of Castile and León, in northern Spain, declared the Pirámide de los Italianos, a mausoleum built in the late 1930s to commemorate the Italian soldiers who went to fight, a “good of cultural interest”. in the Spanish Civil War and who died there. The future of this monument in Spain has been discussed for some time, not only because it has been abandoned and in decay for decades, but above all because in Spain there is a so-called “democratic memory” law, which would have the aim of repairing at least partly the damage caused by Francoism. The Italian senator from Fratelli d’Italia also played a role in the discussions Roberto Menia.
The Pirámide de los Italianos is located in the town of Puerto del Escudo, in the province of Burgos, is approximately 20 meters high and is built of concrete. Inaugurated in 1939 after two years of work, it was commissioned by the dictator Francisco Franco to honor the soldiers of the fascist corps of volunteer troops sent by Benito Mussolini to Spain, to support the Spanish regime during the civil war which was fought between right-wing nationalists and republicans of the left between 1936 and 1939. Until a few decades ago, the remains of around 400 men killed in some battles fought in the area, including that of Santander in 1937, were found in the 360 niches inside and in the crypt.
This austere mausoleum was designed by Italian architect Attilio Radic and contains various symbols and references to fascism. As he said to the daily newspaper He Country the historian Carlota Martínez, an expert on Italy’s role in the Spanish civil war, inside for example there is the writing “Presente, presente, presente”, the motto used by the fascists to honor the dead and also taken up by Franco. Even more noticeable, the entrance door is framed by a big “M”which according to some historians would be a reference to death or the dead, while according to others it would indicate Mussolini himself (in any case the cult of the fallen was, and still is, well rooted in fascist and far-right movements).
In the 1970s the remains of the soldiers it housed were moved to Zaragoza or repatriated to Italy. Senator Menia he said that this occurred following a serious accident of the bus which was transporting some family members of the dead soldiers to the mausoleum for a visit. 12 people died, and in 1975 the Italian government obtained permission to move the remains from there, or repatriate them, to make visits easier. Since then the monument was abandoned and has often been vandalized over time, remaining however a building known and venerated by neo-fascist groups.
The interior of the mausoleum (Tomás Alonso/ Contact via ZUMA Press, ANSA)
The Pirámide de los Italianos in Spain had been talked about again since the end of 2022, with the entry into force of the democratic memory law (Democratic Memory Law), approved by the socialist government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. Among other things, the law provides for evaluating what to do with monuments, buildings or various legacies of Franco’s dictatorship, the period between the coup d’état of July 1936 and the entry into force of the Spanish Constitution of 1978 (the transition from dictatorship to democracy had begun with the death of Franco at the end of 1975). The law allows individual autonomous communities to decide how to intervene, also giving the power to demolish monuments deemed problematic.
In the case of the mausoleum, some argued that it should be destroyed; others, such as the mayor of the municipality in which it is located, of the centre-right Ciudadanos party, believed that it should be protected as a historical testimony. Roberto Menia, who is responsible for the “Italians in the world” department of Fratelli d’Italia, had presented a question to the Senate to ask the Italian government to intervene and guarantee his protection. As he said to the Trieste newspaper Il PiccoloMenia had also taken action in Spain to put pressure and ask for the pyramid to be protected.
After some discussions also related to the ownership of the land on which it stands, which appears to belong to a breeders’ association, in February 2023 the council of the community of Castile and León had started the process to include the mausoleum among the assets of cultural interest in the village. At the end of February, a spokesperson for the junta, supported by the far-right Vox party and the centre-right People’s Party (PP), announced that it had been included in the list of assets of cultural interest «for its architecture and its aesthetic, architectural and landscape”.
“History is also what you don’t like,” he said Country the local councilor for culture, Gonzalo Santonja, of Vox. In a post shared on X (Twitter), Menia wrote: “We have prevented the ideological push of those who want to erase history.” In a statement, Fratelli d’Italia MEP Nicola Procaccini, co-president of the ECR group, of which Fratelli d’Italia in the European Parliament is part, wrote: «It is a sign of great civilization and a victory of culture over barbarism , thanks to the commitment of Vox and the local population, against the iconoclastic fury of the Spanish left.”
The back of the mausoleum (Tomás Alonso/ Contact via ZUMA Press, ANSA)
With the indication of an asset of cultural interest, from now on the owners of the land on which it stands will have the obligation to protect the monument and ensure its integrity, but they will also have to guarantee the possibility of visiting it four times a month and allow access to scholars and scientists. For the moment the Spanish government has not opposed the local government’s decision. However, the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, a local organization, announced that will report the junta for apologia of fascism and for the glorification of those who defined “Italian fascist murderers”. For the association, including the monument in the list of assets of cultural interest is “a humiliation for the victims of Franco’s dictatorship”.
Moreover, the problem of what to do with fascist monuments and with the physical evidence of the dictatorial regimes of the past is a problem that Italy knows and faces with perhaps even greater difficulty than Spain, part of a broader debate on memory and the public use that is made of it. There are those who think that those testimonies should be removed, others say that they should be integrated or contextualized, that they should in short stimulate a collective historical reflection, still others consider them to be a simple sign of the past and harmless as such.
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