Ruins of the Church, Rodén

This image is of the remains of a former church in the ruined and abandoned village of Rodén, near Belchite in Aragon. On the wall of the church, the name of Falangist founder and Francoist martyr, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, has been inscribed. Francoist war dead such as José Antonio constituted an important element in the memorial horizon of the Franco regime, and the Falangist leader became an iconic victim of Franco’s bloody crusade. Buried four times – first in a shared grave in Alicante cemetery, alongside the four men executed with him; then moved to a private grave in the same cemetery after the Francoists took the city; in October 1939, transferred to a tomb at the high altar of the basilica in the Escorial palace, having been carried there on the shoulders of old comrades who walked from Alicante; and finally at the high altar of the Valley of the Fallen – José Antonio’s fate reminds us that Spain has spent the past eight decades burying and exhuming its Civil-War dead, showing a concern for bodily remains that continues in different guises today.

In the Francoist zone, José Antonio became known as “the Absent One” (el Ausente), and Franco officially revealed his death only on 16 November 1938. Later, he was referred to via the exclamation “¡Present!” (Presente) with streets named after him and memorial stones, such as this at Rodén, raised in his honour across Spain. José Antonio became the object of a funerary cult, and his remains were important not only because of his status as the martyred founder of the Falange, but for his symbolic role in the construction of a new state. Thus, the inclusion of José Antonio’s name on a list of dead in a village or small town could constitute a process of meaning-making for the relatives of the Francoist fallen, offering a sacrificial and redemptive explanation for their loved ones’ deaths.