Monument to His Excellency, the Head of State / Monument to Victory

The monument to His Excellency the Spanish Head of State was inaugurated at ten this morning at the confluence of the Rambla del General Franco and the Avenida de Anaga. More than 100,000 people, from all over the island, witnessed the solemn ceremony. The monument, work of the sculptor Juan de Avalos, was erected by popular subscription of the people of Tenerife, to commemorate the departure of the Generalísimo to lead the Nationalist movement, at the time he was captain general of the Canaries.

Extract from the Spanish newspaper ABC, 17 March 1966

At the time of its inauguration in 1966 this monument in Santa Cruz de Tenerife by the sculptor Juan de Ávalos y Taborda (1911-2006) was explicitly described as being in honour of General Franco. Franco had been stationed in Tenerife to take on the role of Captain General of the Canary Islands in March 1936, only months before his departure for Morocco to take command of the Army of Africa in July 1936 (contrary to the news report above, Franco did not become the Nationalist leader until October 1936).

Popularly known as ‘Monumento a Franco’ or ‘Monumento del Ángel’, in recent years there has been debate—despite the clarity of its description at its inauguration—about whether the male figure carried by the angel portrays Franco or not, and whether the monument depicts Franco’s departure from the Canary Islands aboard a British aircraft (a de Havilland Dragon Rapide, piloted by the Briton Cecil Bebb). Before the change to its current name ‘Monumento a la Victoria’ in 2011, it was briefly titled ‘Monumento al Ángel Caído’ [Monument to the Fallen Angel], which was criticised as being an inaccurate description motivated by a wish to avoid the Historical Memory Law 2007.

The monument comprises cast-bronzes figures: one of an angel with extended wings carrying a second, male, figure, that holds a cross-shaped sword with its point facing downward. A base of granite supports the figures in a reservoir of 30 metres diameter which is closed at its rear by a wall with nine 14-metre-high pilasters which carry the crests of the Canary Islands and of the city of Santa Cruz. Originally, water fell down the channels created between the pilasters and there was a profusion of jets of water in the reservoir; in recent years the monument has fallen into disrepair.

This is now the only monument specifically to General Franco that remains in Spain, despite the Historical Memory Law of 2007 and the Canarian Historical Memory Law 2018. Although the monument clearly violates these laws, there are complex ongoing political discussions about whether the monument has any historic cultural value or whether it should be removed. On 8 March 2023 (International Women’s Day) the already red-paint-stained face of the angel was splattered with violet paint in a protest by a feminist collective to demonstrate their ‘total condemnation of the most significant symbol of Francoism in the Canaries’.