Speaker 1: That's right. It's spooky weak. It can happen here. Those
Speaker 1: were ghost noises if you haven't realized, and that must
Speaker 1: mean that today we are doing a podcast about mass graves.
Speaker 1: What's going on? What is happening in aboutground, running sounds,
Speaker 1: running water? We've summoned a fucking spirit. Where's that coming from?
Speaker 1: I don't hear it. I don't. I don't hear anything. Guys,
Speaker 1: you're just you don't hear it. It's gone, now, it's gone.
Speaker 1: It's the podcast where we convince Garrison there's a ghost
Speaker 1: in the zoom machine. It's okay, I could I could
Speaker 1: like do a I could do a lesser bad as
Speaker 1: you go to the pentagram? Who really want to? It's fine,
Speaker 1: I'm not worried. I like the pentagram. That's what I'm
Speaker 1: tattooing on my children. Oh nice me too. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: haven't done the forehead though, Like a coward, you've done there.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, I mean elbow. Elbow is the way to go. So, Garrison,
Speaker 1: what do you know about mass graves? Um never been
Speaker 1: to one to my knowledge. They seem like they're not great.
Speaker 1: Usually they're a signifier that something something not great happened.
Speaker 1: A little bit of a noopsie. Uh yeah, yeah, can
Speaker 1: be a way to hide one's mistakes, certainly. Yeah, where
Speaker 1: would you if you have to guess where the biggest
Speaker 1: mass grave in the world is? Where where would you go? For? Well,
Speaker 1: I know there's a lot of big ones in Canada.
Speaker 1: But if I'm going to guess, they call those schools
Speaker 1: in Canada, and yeah, I would say, like Russia, maybe
Speaker 1: he has the biggest mass grave. I don't know. That's
Speaker 1: just like off the top of my head. No, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's you got a guest sharing. Oh no, I know
Speaker 1: where the biggest cemetery is, but I guess that's very different.
Speaker 1: Where is the biggest cemetery? Rock? Really? Okay? Iraq has
Speaker 1: the world and it's supposed to be haunted, so okay,
Speaker 1: this one is not haunted. But as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, it's the biggest mass grave in the world.
Speaker 1: About thirty four thousand people. Um, And this is in Spain.
Speaker 1: Spain does not get enough credit for it its mass graves.
Speaker 1: In fact, second only to Cambodia in the number of
Speaker 1: mass graves that it has. Spain has about a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifteen thousand people who were forcibly disappeared and are
Speaker 1: still buried in unidentified graves, but about thirty five four
Speaker 1: thousands of them are buried in the place we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about today, which is the Vadi los Cailos
Speaker 1: or the Valley of the Fallen. So the Calros is
Speaker 1: not only a mass grave, but it's also a Catholic basilica.
Speaker 1: It's also the largest basilica in the world. And it
Speaker 1: was built by one Francisco Franco, who was the dictator
Speaker 1: of Spain from the nineteen from nine till and it
Speaker 1: was also his own grave until when Spain dug him up,
Speaker 1: put him in a helicopter, flew him across the country
Speaker 1: so that no one could like car bomb or protest
Speaker 1: or otherwise desecrate his corpse, and buried him in another grave.
Speaker 1: So that's what I want to talk about today, the
Speaker 1: Va los cao It means Valley of the Fallen. Right. Incidentally,
Speaker 1: there's a film called Valley of the Dead, which I said,
Speaker 1: anyone else seen? This? Was it just me who decided
Speaker 1: to curse himself? Okay, just me? More of the shame. Yeah,
Speaker 1: many more people should be enjoying Spanish Civil War zombie
Speaker 1: fiction movies in which both sides come together to fight
Speaker 1: against the greater foe of the undead, and not actually
Speaker 1: a thing that happened. It's the value of the undead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could be called the value of the undead. But
Speaker 1: they didn't. They didn't quite get that far. Some of
Speaker 1: the least spectacular dubbing I've ever seen in a film,
Speaker 1: like like, I'm used to watching like English stuff dubbed
Speaker 1: in Spanish, but I don't think I've before seen something
Speaker 1: Spanish dubbed in like really cringe American English. It's not
Speaker 1: it's it's not great. No it's not, but in a
Speaker 1: sense it is also great, but in you know, in
Speaker 1: in a sort of enjoyably bad sense. But yeah it is.
Speaker 1: It is very funny. It's on Netflix. It's free malon Nazis.
Speaker 1: I think it was called in Spanish, but Valley of
Speaker 1: the Dead in in English. People should check it out
Speaker 1: if they want a different spooky film towards this Halloween.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the value of the fallen. It
Speaker 1: was built under Francos direction as kind of this national
Speaker 1: act of atonement for the Civil War, and at first
Speaker 1: he said it was going to be memorial to both sides,
Speaker 1: so that's like value of the all in. But well, first,
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be a memorial to the martyrs
Speaker 1: of his glorious crusade against the Reds, against Adonism, against Satanism,
Speaker 1: against all the things that are bad according to Franco's
Speaker 1: but it wasn't. Really. It was just a giant monument
Speaker 1: of Franco's national Catholic ideology, which kind of fuses the
Speaker 1: Nah and the Church in this one massive ball of
Speaker 1: terrible shit. It's designed in the neoclassical style, which fascists love.
Speaker 1: Fascist loves the neoclassical style because they can like draw
Speaker 1: these direct lines between themselves and the empires of antiquity,
Speaker 1: right and except without the fucking paint because their cowards
Speaker 1: and fools look white because they're tiny babies. This is true. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they never did the thing where they like bedazzled their
Speaker 1: statues like the Greeks and the Romans did. Most of shame,
Speaker 1: someone should bust in there with some glit of spray
Speaker 1: paint and tarted up a bit. I haven't done that, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: returned to tradition. Make your stat who look cringe yeh,
Speaker 1: that's how they're supposed look, don't worry that the statues
Speaker 1: do look cringe, but unfortunately they're not shiny, which is disappointing.
Speaker 1: It's built of granite, though, which I guess is kind
Speaker 1: of a return for tradition. It was built very near
Speaker 1: the Escorial, which is like the resting place and palace
Speaker 1: of the Kings of Spain. And that's because Franco wants
Speaker 1: to draw a link between himself and Philip the Second. Right.
Speaker 1: Philip the Second was the King of Spain who, at
Speaker 1: the time that he ruled, ruled every continent that was
Speaker 1: known to European people, or rule territory, and which is great,
Speaker 1: which is not a problem, of course, it's in fact good,
Speaker 1: and an inbred old Spanish dude was ruling over places
Speaker 1: that he couldn't really conceive of and had never visited,
Speaker 1: and there are no problems with that. Okay. So work
Speaker 1: begins on Vils Cairos in ninety forty. Right, it's a
Speaker 1: year after the end of the Spanish Civil War, and
Speaker 1: Franco decrees that he's going to make this memorial to
Speaker 1: the glorious national crusade against the Reds, and unbelievably, he
Speaker 1: wanted work to be finished in a year, which obviously
Speaker 1: he's not operating in like reality because he's a piece
Speaker 1: of ship. But it took twenty years to build, right,
Speaker 1: so it was off by yeah, big construction, understand, Francisco Franco.
Speaker 1: And like King Philip, he could have plunder the entire
Speaker 1: labor and capital of the America's to build his folly,
Speaker 1: and instead he relied on the forced labor of about
Speaker 1: twenty thousand prisoners of war. These were former Republicans, right,
Speaker 1: and they were forced to build a church. Obviously many
Speaker 1: of them did not like the church, and we're not
Speaker 1: really very fond of building what is now the biggest
Speaker 1: Catholic cathedra in the world, actually, and it has the
Speaker 1: biggest cross in the world, which it shocked me that
Speaker 1: the biggest cross in the world wasn't in the United States,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure Ted Cruz is actively working on it
Speaker 1: as we speak. Yeah. I feel like if you like
Speaker 1: walked around my hometown and told people at the biggest
Speaker 1: cross in the world was a Catholic one, they would
Speaker 1: immediately spent twenty trillion dollars building a bigger one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, the only thing that could convince them to
Speaker 1: defund the police would be yeah, yeah, owning the Catholic cross.
Speaker 1: Maybe we should put that, Maybe we should enter that
Speaker 1: into the discourse on true social or something. That Franco,
Speaker 1: of course, is not the only person buried there. Right
Speaker 1: right next to Franco in the center of the basica
Speaker 1: is his friend Jossi Antonio Primo de dri Veda um
Speaker 1: Primo died exactly thirty nine years before Franco on the
Speaker 1: twenty November, and he because he was killed by the Republicans,
Speaker 1: which is based on good and and he has just
Speaker 1: little gravestone there next to Franco, which of course has
Speaker 1: not created any problems. After Spain it sort of began
Speaker 1: to transition to democracy and Franco died. It's of course
Speaker 1: not a bad thing to put a giant monument to
Speaker 1: fascism and Francoism, and nobody is going to turn up
Speaker 1: there and do a fascism in the years afterwards. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit unfortunate. So there's every day at
Speaker 1: eleven o'clock a priest sas a mass, and at that
Speaker 1: mass you can generally find old people who will sort
Speaker 1: of mill around for a while and then quietly start
Speaker 1: doing fascist salute, which is not, which is not great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to be comfortable first, yeah, well you got yeah, you
Speaker 1: gotta get like you've got to sample the vibes and
Speaker 1: then do a fascist and the vibes here are probably
Speaker 1: not great. They also have acquired to any acquire of
Speaker 1: small children who sing why because of fucking what? Because
Speaker 1: everything about this is cursed. There's a film, there's a
Speaker 1: film about these old children who go to a quote
Speaker 1: unquote traditional school at the Basilica, which I can imagine
Speaker 1: it's great, and they learn all kinds of wonderful things
Speaker 1: about critical race theory. Yes. So the priests also says
Speaker 1: a prayer for the fate of Spain and the blessed
Speaker 1: blessed martyrs, which really really is wonderful and perhaps points
Speaker 1: in the direction of the complicity of the Catholic Church
Speaker 1: in looks of the war crimes that we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about today. Second consecutive episode where the Catholic Church
Speaker 1: possible for the whole thing. Wow, I can't believe the
Speaker 1: Catholics did anything bad. No, it's shocking, isn't it, given
Speaker 1: their history of being kind and good and generally respectful
Speaker 1: towards people they disagree with. So true James. Yeah, no
Speaker 1: problems with the Catholic Church. So this particular church is
Speaker 1: hun It's just a giant hole in a granite ridge,
Speaker 1: right again, a giant hole cup by the Fourth labor
Speaker 1: of Prisoners of War. It's called the Value the Fallen
Speaker 1: because today it houses the remains of about thirty three
Speaker 1: thousand people, and this is what makes it the biggest
Speaker 1: mass grave in the world. Right. The monuments Register includes
Speaker 1: many of their names, and it has the motto kaidos
Speaker 1: portiosi Espana, so fallen for God in Spain, which conveniently
Speaker 1: overlooks the fact that most of the people there didn't
Speaker 1: like God very much and really didn't like the version
Speaker 1: of Spain that's being presented here either, right, because the
Speaker 1: vast majority of them were Republicans, people who would fought
Speaker 1: against Franco's idea of Spain and the civil war, and
Speaker 1: the bodies that came there really kind of came there
Speaker 1: in two distinct waves. And so, like I said, Spain
Speaker 1: has about underd and fourteen thousand odd people who are
Speaker 1: buried in unidentified graves. Right. The vast majority of these
Speaker 1: people are Republicans who were killed by Francois forces. But
Speaker 1: some of them are not. Some of them are Francoists, Catholics,
Speaker 1: Carlist other like right wing fascist type people who were
Speaker 1: killed by the Republicans right now, the bulk of those
Speaker 1: people were dug up and identified by the Franco Wish
Speaker 1: regime in the time that he was in power, and
Speaker 1: many of them were moved to the Value of the
Speaker 1: Fallen and they're identified there. But the majority of the
Speaker 1: people in the Valley of the Fallen were Republican people
Speaker 1: whose remains were taken without their consent from mass graves
Speaker 1: where they were victims of Franco's terror right and they
Speaker 1: were moved to the Valley of the Fallen to be
Speaker 1: some kind of like weird pyramid sacrificed ritual. I don't
Speaker 1: have a complete grasp of Catholicism, but I certainly don't
Speaker 1: understand this ship too sort of I don't know, make
Speaker 1: make Franco's temple more like spectacular and it's very strange,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's very cruel, right. I want to quote
Speaker 1: from the BBC article in two thousand and eleven that
Speaker 1: was written about one of these people, Jorge Valdrico so Um,
Speaker 1: Joe Vadrico Canales was taken from his home in August
Speaker 1: six in the middle of the night and shot by
Speaker 1: a Fascist execution squad. His town had fallen to the
Speaker 1: uprising and he had been singled out as a socialist.
Speaker 1: In ninety nine. His remains were dug from a well
Speaker 1: and moved to the valley of the fallen More than
Speaker 1: thirty thousand warded from both sides of transferred there on
Speaker 1: Franco's orders. For me, it's excruciatingly painful that my father's
Speaker 1: remained from a place built to the glory of the
Speaker 1: victors in the military coup, the Fausto Annales. It feels
Speaker 1: like a double crime, first when he was executed, then
Speaker 1: when they moved his body without our permission to a
Speaker 1: place which is totally inappropriate. H So that experienced, sadly,
Speaker 1: is far from uncommon. Right between three, Like I said
Speaker 1: about thirty these graves were dug up. Lots of these
Speaker 1: were like shallow roadside graves. They were wells. Some people
Speaker 1: were buried in graveyards and they were transferred to the value.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they weren't transferred in their entirety. Incidentally, that like
Speaker 1: they did. These mass graves are not well organized, so
Speaker 1: like to perhaps give some context here, like these they
Speaker 1: began in Spain, began exhuming these mass graves in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, Right, there was a historical memory law past,
Speaker 1: and they're often just just jumbles of corpses and bones. Right,
Speaker 1: some of these mass graves contained like a thousand and people.
Speaker 1: I don't imagine them being like, hey, we're going to
Speaker 1: do a mass grave, now, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like there's kind of digging a hole putting bodies in it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fair to say, yeah, no one made a good plan,
Speaker 1: which is unfortunate, isn't it. But yeah, they like they
Speaker 1: would were they would get all the people who they
Speaker 1: identified as socialist or or feminist or otherwise objectionable to
Speaker 1: their vision of spanishness and then kill them all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then put them in a hole because they consider
Speaker 1: them to be less than human. And they seemingly seemed
Speaker 1: to have dived into the hole and grab some bits
Speaker 1: and pieces and move them to the value of the
Speaker 1: fallen at some point. Wait, so wait, we like how
Speaker 1: are did okay? Like Like what what actually? Like? How
Speaker 1: are like the bodies in the valley of the Fallen?
Speaker 1: Like held? Like what are are they just like, are
Speaker 1: they in like caskets? They just dumped them in another hole? No,
Speaker 1: there are like there are like various it seems like
Speaker 1: there are various different Like some of them are in
Speaker 1: these little stone there are like these little stone tomb
Speaker 1: looking things. But I don't think that those actually contain
Speaker 1: the remains. I think they're in these various pits. So
Speaker 1: they just it's another they moved from one mass grade.
Speaker 1: It's another mass grave that they build a sacrifice temple over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they're now beginning to exhume the already exhumed bodies
Speaker 1: front that. So they're now digging up the valley of
Speaker 1: the fallen right to to identify these remains. And Catalonia
Speaker 1: has a d n A registry, So if you believe
Speaker 1: that you're it would be like people of our generations grandparents.
Speaker 1: If you believe that your grandparents are in a mass
Speaker 1: grade that they would disappeared, then you can register your
Speaker 1: DNA And they tested against the mass graves that they're excuming. Well,
Speaker 1: so that's how they that's how they identify people. And Christie,
Speaker 1: do you know what won't dig a mass grave and
Speaker 1: throw your grandparents in it? I cannot Yeah, Black Rifle
Speaker 1: Coffee company. Well, I was just gonna go with Coca Cola.
Speaker 1: But that's three options and we're back. Hopefully. There was
Speaker 1: no reference to mass graves in those adverts, but we
Speaker 1: can't promise you that. Sadly, they also can't promise you
Speaker 1: that there's mass graves they didn't talk about. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: probably more likely, isn't it. Anyway, enjoy that advert for Nestley.
Speaker 1: Moving on, some of these mass graves have been identified
Speaker 1: by a Spanish nonprofit group called Innovation and Human Rights,
Speaker 1: and they actually have this incredible data set specifically on
Speaker 1: the Valley of the Fallen, where you can look up
Speaker 1: the location of the corpses that are there, right, so
Speaker 1: like where did these where the of the remains that
Speaker 1: have been identified from where they come? And three thousand,
Speaker 1: nine d and two corpses. That's about seventy bus loads
Speaker 1: of dead people. If you want to imagine that they
Speaker 1: came from this small town of Taigona, which is where
Speaker 1: I used to live. That's that's not a big town.
Speaker 1: I was trying to think of like a California town
Speaker 1: to contextualize it by it, but I think most people
Speaker 1: would have heard of towns that's more. I this, despite
Speaker 1: being a pretty rural area, the camp to Tarragon that
Speaker 1: can take contributed about the corpses that remain in the valley,
Speaker 1: and that's probably because it's part of Catalonia. Catalonia was.
Speaker 1: Spain is a is a multi national state, so there
Speaker 1: are lots of nations within Spain, like Catalonia and the
Speaker 1: bas Country being the ones that people are most familiar with.
Speaker 1: Franco particularly hated Catalan separatists, and so as part of
Speaker 1: this ongoing punishment of Catalonia for like trying to leave
Speaker 1: Spain during the Civil War, the Francois dug up the
Speaker 1: remains of the people they'd already murdered and moved them
Speaker 1: to a long way from Catalonia right the Vadlos Gilos
Speaker 1: is near Madrid. Conditions for people who built the valley
Speaker 1: were pretty appalling to the workers and their families lived
Speaker 1: in these shacks. According to archaeologists who exsume them last year,
Speaker 1: families lived in nine meter square shacks with no water electricity.
Speaker 1: They made shoes out of old tires, and they had
Speaker 1: no windows or no heating. Their beds were made of stone,
Speaker 1: and they and their children suffered from malnutrition. It's it's
Speaker 1: not particularly rare for people to have suffered from malnutrition
Speaker 1: in Spain after the Civil War, this period was called
Speaker 1: the Years of Hunger. But even so, it seems like
Speaker 1: there was particular cruelty applied to these people, many of
Speaker 1: whom were serving sentences for things like forming unions or
Speaker 1: forming student political movements right like that. They were like
Speaker 1: they hadn't done anything wrong, that they were the victims
Speaker 1: of a totalitarian state. So one of those people is
Speaker 1: Nicolas Sanchez al Bognosum. He was interviewed being a Catline
Speaker 1: newspaper and Nathionale, and he talks a lot about his
Speaker 1: memories there, and incidentally, he escaped after a few months
Speaker 1: with the help of Norman Mailer's sister. Yeah yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: based Norman. She's incredibly based actually, like yeah, she she
Speaker 1: like helped him escape and then ferried him across the
Speaker 1: Pyrenees to France, where he escaped into exile and Argentina
Speaker 1: and lived for decades. And the only good well, okay,
Speaker 1: I was gonna I was gonna make an only good
Speaker 1: Argentini and exile joke, but I probably probably is actually
Speaker 1: genuinely worth mentioning that a lot like a lot of
Speaker 1: people who were Jews fled to Argentina to like right
Speaker 1: before wor War two. Yeah, and that's a huge thing.
Speaker 1: And you get people like calling them Nazis because they're
Speaker 1: fucking dumb as ship and it's like, guys, come fucking
Speaker 1: like if you can't tell between the Nazi and the
Speaker 1: people they were killing, like please stop. Okay, this has
Speaker 1: been my interlude about people doing this ship because oh
Speaker 1: my god, yeah, maybe maybe don't cast his persons, maybe
Speaker 1: do a little bit of reading first. So yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of people, a lot of them end up in
Speaker 1: in Argentine exile. Actually, ironically, Argentina also claims universal jurisdiction.
Speaker 1: So what we've seen in the last few years it's
Speaker 1: like Spanish historical memory groups trying to trying to get
Speaker 1: people who perpetrated crimes against humanity under Franco extradited to
Speaker 1: Argentina to be questioned, which which is also very funny
Speaker 1: given that Argentina has its own legacy of crimes against humanity, right,
Speaker 1: and Spain does his ship too. Actually, Spain claims universal
Speaker 1: jurisdiction and we'll try and like extradite people who have
Speaker 1: done crimes against humanity in formerly colonized countries without Spain
Speaker 1: has not faced up to its own crimes against his
Speaker 1: own population. You know, I will say I am entirely
Speaker 1: down for like intentionally starting some sort of like Spain
Speaker 1: Argentina like ship fast where both of them like get
Speaker 1: piste off with each other and start trying each other's
Speaker 1: war criminals. That's really funny. I would be better. I
Speaker 1: would be even more impressed to see, Um, are you
Speaker 1: familiar with who Balfa Gathon is? See that weird prosecutor guys? Yes? Yes, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: who tried to who tried to try US officials for
Speaker 1: crimes against humanity for the things they didn't guantanamobey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be outstanding. I would love to see like
Speaker 1: Spain and the United States come to blows over like
Speaker 1: their respective crimes against humanity. It would be wonderful, Sandy,
Speaker 1: And like in Iraq too, I think he like, um,
Speaker 1: what was it called that? The do they call it
Speaker 1: enhanced interrogation techniques that they were using when they were
Speaker 1: like elextrocuting people in search? Yeah, so like he tried
Speaker 1: to prosecute people for that, sadly, like everything else in Spain.
Speaker 1: He strayed a little bit too close to looking at
Speaker 1: the corruption of the Spanish state and lost his position,
Speaker 1: which is a shame. He did some pretty chuddly ship himself,
Speaker 1: like he very clearly presided at betrials where people had
Speaker 1: very clearly been tortured and was just like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: interesting to see you in the witness box giving this testimony.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to note the fact that you've like
Speaker 1: very clearly been beaten to ship with a night stick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Spain a country with no problems, famously, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: Albunos escapes. Actually, there's a film called the Los Angeles Barbaras,
Speaker 1: the Barbara's Years, I guess the Barbarian Years, which which
Speaker 1: looks at his escape, and he was one of only
Speaker 1: two people to be escaped. But people died building the
Speaker 1: Valley of the Fallen right and then were buried there
Speaker 1: in this weird monument to to Francoism. So, like I said,
Speaker 1: Spain really hasn't dealt with its legacy of of mass
Speaker 1: murder right. Um. And it never really had a Truth
Speaker 1: and Reconciliation commission, never really dealt with the amount of
Speaker 1: people murdered after the war. Um. And it's really only
Speaker 1: in the last like ten or fifteen years at Spain
Speaker 1: has begun digging up these mass graves. So um and
Speaker 1: the pedroal Sanchez and the Socialist government, they've they've begun
Speaker 1: doing more to deal with this. In two thousand and
Speaker 1: seven and earlier, Spanish Socialist government passes thing called the
Speaker 1: Law for Historical Memory, and the Law for Historical Memory
Speaker 1: funded the recovery of the memory of the Civil War right.
Speaker 1: And you can draw very obvious parallels between how Spain
Speaker 1: has dealt with its civil war and its tradition to democracy,
Speaker 1: and how the United States has dealt with its Civil
Speaker 1: war right. And you will see like that there is
Speaker 1: um do you got do you know what voxes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're like the insane for the right party in Spain, yes,
Speaker 1: and so fucking cringe, holy shit, even for the standards
Speaker 1: of far right parties, like oh my fucking god, oh god, yeah,
Speaker 1: do they wear silly outfits? Oh yeah, I would imagine,
Speaker 1: So I don't I don't think. I don't think there's
Speaker 1: ever been a picture of them like where they haven't
Speaker 1: been in like the weirdest looking ship. Because occasionally some
Speaker 1: of the like Spanish fascists were some pretty gay outfits,
Speaker 1: and it's really funny. Are you talking about the phone Legion,
Speaker 1: the ones who were like if Tom of Finland created
Speaker 1: a military Yes, yes, that is exactly who I'm referring to. Yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: they are not so much outright fascists as a fashy
Speaker 1: military unit. Yeah, but yes, uh yeah, it's I know, yeah,
Speaker 1: absolute first trap. Just like if people should google photos
Speaker 1: if they haven't seen them, it'll occasionally pop up on
Speaker 1: like Twitter or something where people will find these incredibly
Speaker 1: butch dudes who like, like, it's not that they've unbuttoned
Speaker 1: their shirts just so just that their pecks are ripping
Speaker 1: out of their shoes. No, it's their shirts are not
Speaker 1: equipped with buttons, because it ye like, to be in
Speaker 1: that unit, you have to be so incredibly buff that
Speaker 1: you you start buttoning your shirt from the navel down,
Speaker 1: and which, to be fair, is more appropriate in Spain.
Speaker 1: I remember, like I used to teach in Spain and
Speaker 1: then I taught in the United States and coming back
Speaker 1: and being like, oh, I really have to change the
Speaker 1: way I dress to be appropriate for an American audience. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The to get back to mass graves and away from
Speaker 1: tactical first traps. The what Spain didn't have right was
Speaker 1: like Franco didn't get hung upside down from a gas
Speaker 1: station and beaten with sticks in the face. Right, more
Speaker 1: is the shame. There's still time, right body, his body
Speaker 1: is still available for beating. You know, maybe maybe they
Speaker 1: would be the worst thing. But Spain never really faced
Speaker 1: its past. Right, So in seven and amnesty law was
Speaker 1: passed which prevented any criminal investigation into the crimes committed
Speaker 1: in the Franco years. Um statues of Franco, some of
Speaker 1: them were not moved until like the last five or
Speaker 1: ten years, and when they were removed, it was like
Speaker 1: the government just went in in the night and scooped
Speaker 1: them up and no one really said anything and then
Speaker 1: they were gone. And so like Spain has only really
Speaker 1: really recently entered into this period like that we call
Speaker 1: it second transition, and that's like it's transition from Spain
Speaker 1: began transitioning to democracy in right, but what we call
Speaker 1: the period after that, it's more of a post dictatorship then,
Speaker 1: like a complete democratic transition in Spain was still processing.
Speaker 1: As you can see, right, many of its crimes under Franco,
Speaker 1: and it's it's really only begun to process those in
Speaker 1: the last few years. So that gets us up to
Speaker 1: the oh that I think election of Pedro Sanchez right
Speaker 1: in the Socialist government, and um, their decision to exhume Franco. Alright,
Speaker 1: so Franco's Franco's lying in this monument. Right, it's the
Speaker 1: biggest mass grave in the world, and on the day
Speaker 1: of his death, on the twenty February every year, it's
Speaker 1: it's a gathering place for fascists. Right, So, Franco and
Speaker 1: Primo de la Vera both died on the same day,
Speaker 1: and fascists and castalist both love this this kind of
Speaker 1: weird spiritual magic shit and really really yeah, yeah, I've heard,
Speaker 1: I know there are some books about it apparently, huh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's it's said that both of them have
Speaker 1: a funnest for this stuff. So then both dying on
Speaker 1: the same day, it's an extremely fucking cursed thing that
Speaker 1: has led to sucks. M hmm. It sucks if you
Speaker 1: if you ever have to go near this place on
Speaker 1: the twenty November, which I don't recommend. Oh god, I
Speaker 1: could only imagine that must be that must be the
Speaker 1: worst time. Yeah, because it's all because it's all of
Speaker 1: the nerdiest Nazis like yeah, it's like yeah, yeah. It's
Speaker 1: like if if like nerdy like Nazi internet people had
Speaker 1: a real life place to gather and just openly do
Speaker 1: fucking fascist salutes, that sounds like it sounds horrible. The
Speaker 1: fascist with a calendar, like no, yeah, the calendar who's
Speaker 1: like into praying. It's like yeah, yeah, really really really
Speaker 1: into praying. I'm just I'm just gonna say this, if
Speaker 1: the if the anarchists were in charge of it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be having fucking stupid, cringe prey fascist meetings. This can
Speaker 1: be prevented, then can rise a third time. Sure, but
Speaker 1: it is the nerdiest thing ever to think about a
Speaker 1: fascist like updating their Google calendar being like, yeah, for
Speaker 1: all their spiritual holidays where their leaders died, why do
Speaker 1: they always celebrate the day that their leaders died. It's
Speaker 1: always the weirdest for us. It's a death cult, right, like, like,
Speaker 1: like their leader dying is this is the moment when
Speaker 1: they finally expressed the pure core of fascism. That's true,
Speaker 1: that that's actually a really good observation that actually is
Speaker 1: is more on the point than what it should be, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like immortalizing them on that day? Yeah, I mean was
Speaker 1: the slogan of the did the African the African Army
Speaker 1: like yeah, I think it spains for a legion actually
Speaker 1: like long lived death and they called themselves se yes,
Speaker 1: that is their slogan. They called themselves the um what's
Speaker 1: it called, the Fiances of Death. Yeah, they're they're they're
Speaker 1: they're all gay because they're all married to death, which
Speaker 1: is pretty metal. They're also kind of fashy. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that that that does really showcase the whole death cult
Speaker 1: aspect of fascism. Yeah, you know, you know what, he
Speaker 1: isn't a gay neckcromancer. Again, we can't promise. I wish,
Speaker 1: I wish we could advertise some more recollect I would
Speaker 1: I would be in my element. Yeah. I've just done
Speaker 1: an ad read for a couple of them, as I
Speaker 1: should have should have. Let you know, I am the
Speaker 1: so jealous. That's all that's all I want out of life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: please enjoy these gay necromancy products and services. Okay, we're back.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed that as much as we did,
Speaker 1: so I think credibly cringe and just Boomerie fascist cerevation
Speaker 1: on Franco's death and primer der Rivera's death on November
Speaker 1: always happened at the videos Caidos right, they would turn
Speaker 1: up in two thousand and ten Spain band like fascist symbolism.
Speaker 1: But this hasn't really stopped fascist doing fascist symbolism right,
Speaker 1: including bringing their for land flags, giving it the fascist salute,
Speaker 1: marching and just generally doing like cringe like where where
Speaker 1: like r OTC cosplay meet meets the Catholic Church stuff
Speaker 1: on the twenty November of a year at Franco's grave,
Speaker 1: and its like there are always flowers on Franco's grave,
Speaker 1: like you can't go there on a given day and
Speaker 1: not find someone like lamenting the fact that Franco is
Speaker 1: dead and they can no longer just disappear people they
Speaker 1: disagree with. Right, It's ship and so incidentally an amusing
Speaker 1: sort of side effective. Do you remember the storm area
Speaker 1: fifty one like Facebook thing? Yeah, the right area challenge
Speaker 1: like last year or two years ago, yea three years ago,
Speaker 1: a lot longer ago. It does it also it also
Speaker 1: feels like a very thing. Yeah. So the Spanish version
Speaker 1: of this was Invade via los Calos with the slogan
Speaker 1: that like if the state, the state can't get him,
Speaker 1: if we get him first. I don't think this was
Speaker 1: an anarchist attempt to steal his body, but like massive
Speaker 1: respect of it was. I think it was just some
Speaker 1: extremely online people doing something that they thought was and
Speaker 1: actually is funny, which was yeah, like unfortunately it didn't
Speaker 1: really come too much because they planned to do this
Speaker 1: on a twenty November and in October Franco's body was
Speaker 1: removed from the Valley of the Fallen. Okay, see this
Speaker 1: this is this is the thing with all of these things.
Speaker 1: That's the same thing with the fucking stop Coney thing.
Speaker 1: Like the problem that all of these groups have if
Speaker 1: they want to is they always set their date too
Speaker 1: far out, Like you gotta give it like max. It
Speaker 1: has to be like two weeks out, because if it's
Speaker 1: any longer than that, you moment momentum, Yeah, you get scooped.
Speaker 1: So look, if if you, if you, if you, if
Speaker 1: you want to seize the body of a dead dictator
Speaker 1: and throw them into a canal, you have to move fast.
Speaker 1: And that's why I'm announcing that for for November nineteenth,
Speaker 1: we're all now we probably should not go to Russia
Speaker 1: to have fun with Trotsky's body. Should be Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: going Trotsky's body in Russia. Yeah, I thought so. I know,
Speaker 1: I've seen back from Mexico. I have had I've had
Speaker 1: friends that have gone places to make fun of Trotsky's body,
Speaker 1: um lenning his body, lending his bodies up for grabs,
Speaker 1: like okay, it's just sitting there. Well, maybe get I
Speaker 1: think we should start small. Let's encourage the fans of
Speaker 1: the podcast between now and what we got right, but
Speaker 1: now in eleventh of November, right, go after Papa doctor Valier.
Speaker 1: Get get him start you know that, and then move
Speaker 1: on from there. Okay, it is it's a Mexico. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right closer to the sort of geographical heartland, and
Speaker 1: we don't need to go into a war zone. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and the middle of November, we're all going to be
Speaker 1: going going to Mexico road trip, yep, field trip. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's go. You know, I will say, there is something
Speaker 1: genuinely interesting here about the way that like, okay, so
Speaker 1: you look at sort of fascism, sorry, you look at
Speaker 1: fascism's death drive and the way that it sort of
Speaker 1: like treats his money means to death. And then like
Speaker 1: you look at the way that every single sort of
Speaker 1: like like all this day socialist regimes, like it's not
Speaker 1: so much that they have a death drive, but it's
Speaker 1: like they're like all of them, Like I learned this recently,
Speaker 1: Like so I knew that they didn't too, that they'd
Speaker 1: like embalmed Stalin, right, and like, well they involved Lenin,
Speaker 1: they inbalved mao. Yeah, they also learned they did it
Speaker 1: to Ho Chi Minh too. Yeah, it's just like they
Speaker 1: did it to like all of these people, and it's
Speaker 1: like there there's there's this sort of weird like almost
Speaker 1: in version of it where it's like like fascism is
Speaker 1: based sort of on like you know, like on on
Speaker 1: the sort of totalizing worship of death, whereas stalism is
Speaker 1: like it has this kind of inversion of it where
Speaker 1: it's like it's based on like a kind of like
Speaker 1: eternal life for their leaders in this also incredibly bizarre way.
Speaker 1: And don't want to be like all of Europe is
Speaker 1: determined by its previous like totalitarian religions. But there's there's
Speaker 1: something there's something orthodox about the way they've done the
Speaker 1: dead Russian dudes so I'm wanna talk about Franco's corps
Speaker 1: a little bit, and then I want to end with
Speaker 1: something else, because I don't want to just focus on
Speaker 1: Spanish fact ships because they suck and I hate them
Speaker 1: and I am sad that they are not all dead.
Speaker 1: But Franco is. So Franco's family weren't allowed to use
Speaker 1: the Spanish flag on his coffin. Yeah, so in staid,
Speaker 1: they fucking got the Franco with flag, right, the old
Speaker 1: nationalist flag, which because they have filth, they did that. Instead,
Speaker 1: they carried his coffin onto a helicopter. They flew in
Speaker 1: by helicopter to Madrid, where the services provided over by
Speaker 1: a priest who is the son of Lieutenant Colonel Antonio
Speaker 1: to head on Molina, the man who led the failed
Speaker 1: one coup that attempted to topple Spain's young democracy. And
Speaker 1: great to see this continuation of these elites right like,
Speaker 1: this is a this is a country which has of
Speaker 1: course moved on completely from its civil war and dictatorship
Speaker 1: on the post of side. Franco is now buried with
Speaker 1: his wife and he is very near to Luis Carlo Blanco,
Speaker 1: who people will remember as a podcast alumni in Spain's
Speaker 1: first astronaut and so I was going to quote Vox,
Speaker 1: but I won't because they fucking suck. And now I
Speaker 1: want you quote Box. You should just like throw fruit
Speaker 1: at them, and I think that's like, that's not an
Speaker 1: actionable threat, right, just uh sure, don't throw like any
Speaker 1: fruit sort of potentially lethal, right, like like a large
Speaker 1: watermelon or something potentially fatal like just to banana or
Speaker 1: if you know the Vox representatives like allergic to a fruit,
Speaker 1: you throw it at them and gets on their face
Speaker 1: and they die and it gets blamed on James. We
Speaker 1: all get taken into a year's long lawsuit and then
Speaker 1: we all lose their jobs. Don't do that. Don't do that.
Speaker 1: No blame someone else for that. You can if you
Speaker 1: are directing the police to me in Spain, they can
Speaker 1: contact me by Twitter DM by Twitter is at at
Speaker 1: Chopped at Chappo Trappers. Yep, that's where you can find me.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, sell traps. Okay. So of course Fox make
Speaker 1: exactly the same bullshit destroying history argument that the Confederates
Speaker 1: making in the United States. It doesn't make them anymore
Speaker 1: right because they're in fact wrong. But incidentally, someone else
Speaker 1: died on November and that is one boilivant order duty right.
Speaker 1: Unlike Franco, he's not buried in a monument made both
Speaker 1: fucking slaves. He's buried alongside other anarchists in mow in Barcelona.
Speaker 1: You can visit his grave there. It's very cool. You
Speaker 1: can always meet interesting people hanging around his grave. And
Speaker 1: if you're in Bathonia, you should do it. Drutti died
Speaker 1: in the middle of the Battle of Madrid, like so
Speaker 1: many other Spanish anarchists. He died. It's lunclear actually, if
Speaker 1: he died because someone negligently discharged their own weapon into
Speaker 1: his back, and which seems to be the most likely case,
Speaker 1: or leading a frontal charge on a machine gun, which
Speaker 1: which is how so many Spanish anarchists died because they
Speaker 1: were so utterly con vinced if they're incredible, like and
Speaker 1: they're not wrong either, they were right about most things,
Speaker 1: but like you get, their willingness to die for anarchism
Speaker 1: was perhaps a little bit problematic. Well, I mean this
Speaker 1: is this is like a thing across the whole history
Speaker 1: of anarchism, Like like like one of the reasons the Russian
Speaker 1: Revolution went the way they did was that like it's
Speaker 1: like the sort of like first crop of Russian anarchists,
Speaker 1: like the moment the White are formed, immediately just went
Speaker 1: to the front lines and all got killed, and like
Speaker 1: Lenning and meanwhile learning the Trotsky are like fucking Chilling
Speaker 1: and Lenning like fucking Patrick Grading, Like yeah, which exactly
Speaker 1: what happened in Spain, right, like Ferrara, all these people
Speaker 1: like get to the front lines and immediately start killing fascists. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: tanky people, I was gonna say something else, um like
Speaker 1: spending their time plotting and scheming to from becoming a
Speaker 1: completely fucking irrelevant political force in Spain to taking over
Speaker 1: in a year and a half because they are the
Speaker 1: only people are willing to provide weapons and many of
Speaker 1: the anarchists have it. What were you going to call
Speaker 1: take people? What were you going to call take it?
Speaker 1: Just it makes me angry. I know, it's just gonna
Speaker 1: just that's that is that is an ovisive answer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say scum or filth or British
Speaker 1: swear word I can't use on the podcast because of
Speaker 1: fans American people, which is fine. Yeah, it's disappointing. I
Speaker 1: don't want to be canceled by work mob. Okay, yeah
Speaker 1: he did Australian moments. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I nearly
Speaker 1: went full of Australian which, like I've done it before
Speaker 1: on television and it just doesn't end well, all right,
Speaker 1: uh in Spanish not English, which also a Spanish word.
Speaker 1: Twenty November in Spain this year it will be like
Speaker 1: what three weeks when people are listening to this, some
Speaker 1: fascion ship head if you live in a town in Spain,
Speaker 1: will be walking around doing shitty fascist things. And people
Speaker 1: who live in Spain of course very aware of this.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to finish it said with another thing
Speaker 1: that anti fascists in Spain doing November. So in the
Speaker 1: fifte November this year, anti fascists all over Spain will
Speaker 1: be gathering to remember fifteen years without Carlos Palomino. People
Speaker 1: might not know who Carlos Palomino is, but I want
Speaker 1: to very briefly recap his story to finish up. So
Speaker 1: on the eleventh of November two thousand and seven, Carlos
Speaker 1: Palomino and about a hundred other anti fascists got on
Speaker 1: the subway in Madrid to counter protest a right wing
Speaker 1: rally and Luca, an immigrant neighborhood that's home to mcgrid's
Speaker 1: Chinatown today. On the train on the way there, he
Speaker 1: ran into a twenty four year old spanage soldier, or
Speaker 1: says wait Este banners. Uh. Estebanez was dressed in clothes.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to talk about the brand actually,
Speaker 1: because we shouldn't hype market Nazis. But the clothes showed
Speaker 1: he was a far right skinhead. Right. Carlos Palomino notes
Speaker 1: is Estebanez takes offense at Carlos Palomino, noting his Nazi
Speaker 1: clothes and stabs him with a machette. Yeah, he stabbed
Speaker 1: someone else as well, but unfortunately Carlos dies pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: He was sixteen years old at the time of his death.
Speaker 1: He was the only child of his mother, and he
Speaker 1: lived with his mom, who was separated from his dad
Speaker 1: and his grandmother. And it affected his mother, as one
Speaker 1: can imagine, pretty terribly right the loss of loss of
Speaker 1: her young son, and as a result, his mother has
Speaker 1: become a prominent anti fascist activist in Spain. She founded
Speaker 1: the Association of the Victims of Fascist, racist and Homophobic Violence,
Speaker 1: and ten years after his death, a thousand people turned
Speaker 1: out and a memorial to him, and ever like, ever
Speaker 1: since he died, every year you'll see these massive rallies
Speaker 1: in Spain of anti fascists And if you've ever seen,
Speaker 1: do you remember, like a year or so ago, there
Speaker 1: was this video going around Tricher and there was a
Speaker 1: group of people chanting like a kiss anti fascist us,
Speaker 1: here are the anti fascists. I see such videos on
Speaker 1: Twitter all the time, so I don't, I don't, I
Speaker 1: don't know, okay, it like it gained relevance among people
Speaker 1: who I've never seen engaging with Spain in any thing before.
Speaker 1: It was a huge rally one thousands of people came
Speaker 1: out to remember him, and I'm sure thousands of people
Speaker 1: will this year too. Like it with Spain's like Spain's
Speaker 1: right for a long time tried to couch itself in
Speaker 1: terms of the neoliberal center right. Yes, so like the
Speaker 1: Partido Popular would see itself in terms of like maybe
Speaker 1: the Tories in Britain or Editories are pretty uh pretty mental,
Speaker 1: but like this this kind of neoliberal European right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it it broadly sort of wanted to see itself
Speaker 1: as part of this like post fascist European right. But
Speaker 1: in recent years it's just taken this disk swing towards
Speaker 1: the hard right like Vox has emerged, and even the
Speaker 1: Partido Popular, which would have seen itself as like neoliberal right,
Speaker 1: have tried to like outbox Vox and they're now like
Speaker 1: just openly standing Francoism again. And in this climate, anti
Speaker 1: fancism has also seen itself resurgent. I guess we're an
Speaker 1: anti fascist. Identities in Spain are more relevant or more
Speaker 1: common than they would have been ten, fifteen, twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: something like that. And as a result, these memorials for
Speaker 1: Carlos have become bigger and bigger for a year, and
Speaker 1: so I wanted to end with a letter his mum
Speaker 1: rate to global anti fascist collectives in two and eleven.
Speaker 1: In our memories, all the anti fascist victims will always
Speaker 1: exist who fighting for a world of equality, dignity, freedom
Speaker 1: and social rights were killed by the ideas of intolerance
Speaker 1: and fascism. The memory will exist for all those victims who,
Speaker 1: due to their different cultures, religions or sexual orientations, were
Speaker 1: murdered by the same murdering hands who hate those who
Speaker 1: are different. Now it's time to continue working against hate
Speaker 1: that it is the best tribute we can offer. Their
Speaker 1: struggles were not in vain. We will continue the path,
Speaker 1: although they are no longer with us in every action
Speaker 1: of anti Fascy struggle. They're inside and in each and
Speaker 1: every one of our hearts, which I thought was really poignant.
Speaker 1: His mother is amazing. Yeah, this whole thing fucking breaks me.
Speaker 1: Like I was. This was a time when, like I too,
Speaker 1: was being a teenage anti fascist in Spain, and this
Speaker 1: is someone who's like almost exactly my age, and obviously
Speaker 1: it isn't alive anymore. And yeah, I'd encourage people to
Speaker 1: read more about him. I'd normally share these events on
Speaker 1: social media when they happen. And yeah, this is extremely
Speaker 1: sad and continues to be extremely sad because Spain refuses
Speaker 1: to face up to it past the dictatorship. You can
Speaker 1: look at where Franco's grave is, organized a protest and
Speaker 1: executed within two weeks and toss him in the river
Speaker 1: if you want to be very proud of you. That
Speaker 1: is absolutely illegal thing to do, and I would be
Speaker 1: prosecuting in Spain, but yeah it did. Any Spain has
Speaker 1: prosecuted everyone from sucking clowns to puppeteers. Now it's now.
Speaker 1: It's serious. When you start coming out of the clowns
Speaker 1: is when I I started getting personally consulted. We need
Speaker 1: to do our episode on clown Block soon, don't we
Speaker 1: we do. I can put on I have clown Block
Speaker 1: right behind me. Okay, yeah yeah, And then the British
Speaker 1: police will send someone undercover in your clown movement for
Speaker 1: five years who will marry one of you and let
Speaker 1: maybe a silly gesture, leave me alone. No, not in Britain.
Speaker 1: It's a crime, all right. Uh, okay, that's been a podcast.
Speaker 1: Few crimes. Okay. It could happen here as a production
Speaker 1: of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
Speaker 1: us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources
Speaker 1: for It could Happen here, updated monthly at cool zone
Speaker 1: Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.