El Escorial

'Spain has an ambiguous attitude to its history' observes Robert Elms when he visits El Escorial. 'Its golden ages are also its dark past. But this often troubled tale, soaked in both blood and glory, has bequeathed an unequalled wealth of castles and palaces, monuments, monasteries and museums.'



'El Escorial is in a gaunt and daunting valley. It is austere, authoritarian, powerful. The dark and devout Catholicism of classical Spain led to this extraordinary edifice, to the excesses of the Inquisition and many centuries but just a few kilometres away to the dark testament of Francisco Franco's faith, El Valle de los Caídos, the Valley of the Fallen.'



'In this overblown, frigid place there's almost no mention of the fact that many political prisoners died making it and that it was decreed by a dictator at the behest of a fanatical creed. The Spanish don't want to know about all of that any more. This would-be-grave has been robbed of all meaning by what some call the pacto de olvido, the agreement to forget.'



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San Lorenzo de El Escorial

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