I started off the 2nd half of my 2023 trip to Spain with another day trip from my Madrid and a visit to another UNESCO World Heritage Site. This time it was to El Escorial, the largest Renaissance building in the world. Like Aranjuez, El Escorial is located in the region of Madrid, but not in the city itself.
Royal Site of San Lorenzo de El Escorial
The official name of El Escorial is the Royal Site of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. El Escorial is a royal monastery and a royal palace. The shortened name of El Escorial causes some confusion because the site is located in the town of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, rather than the nearby town of El Escorial.
Photography was not allowed inside El Escorial when I was there. The interiors were much more ornate than the exterior. The 1 interior feature that everyone remembers–El Escorial’s pièce de résistance–is the library. You’ve simply gotta see it. So here is a link for it.
El Escorial seems more austere than what you might expect from Renaissance architecture. It was built in the late 16th century in the Herrerian style of Spanish Renaissance architecture. The Herrerian style was named after Juan de Herrera, the architect of El Escorial. El Escorial was the 1st example of the style. Herrera also designed the Royal Palace of Aranjuez, but a more traditional Renaissance style was used there.
San Lorenzo de El Escorial
Outside El Escorial, the village of San Lorenzo de El Escorial is bursting with charm. There was outdoor dining all over the place. And I took advantage of it for lunch.
The Gardens at El Escorial
After lunch, I went back to El Escorial to visit the garden. Before entering the garden, I was able to get some good exterior shots thanks to the better lighting later in the day.
If you make it to Madrid, please make an effort to see El Escorial. There’s so much Renaissance splendor to see on the inside.
Valley of the Fallen
After visiting El Escorial, I was supposed to visit another site, Valley of the Fallen. Valley of the Fallen is Spain’s most controversial tourist site. The Spanish name, Valle de los Caídos, was changed in 2022 to Valle de Cuelgamuros, a purely geographical designation, to make it less controversial. So what’s going on here? And what is, or was, Valley of the Fallen?
The site holds a massive monumental complex built on the order of Franco to honor the dead of the Spanish Civil War. 40,000 dead, from both sides of the war, are buried at the complex. Franco himself was buried there after his death in 1975. The monument includes a 490-foot-tall cross, the tallest in the world.
So why is it controversial? For starters, the site was built by prisoners, many of whom were prisoners from the losing side of the Civil War. Much of the work was done using forced labor. Although war dead from both sides were buried at the site, the dedication at the site uses a Francoist motto, which some interpret to be disrespectful to those on the losing Republican side. Should we go on? Many of the Republican dead were buried without the consent or even knowledge of their families.
After Franco’s burial at the complex, it because a pilgrimage site for those who remained his devotees (in other words, fascists). So in 2019, Franco’s body was exhumed and reburied next to his wife in a less monumental cemetery. Then in 2022, the name of the site was changed to merely represent the geographic location, Valley of Cuelgamuros, rather than the more loaded name of Valley of the Fallen.
And why was I unable to get there, thereby depriving you of pictures of Spain’s most controversial site? Well, I wondered the same thing for a while. Bus service to the site is very limited. So I had planned to wrap up my visit to El Escorial in order to catch the bus to Valley of the Fallen–well, Valley of Cuelgamuros. I, along with others, kept waiting and waiting for the bus. There were buses with similar numbers, but none was going to Valley of the Fallen. (Fortunately, some people translated what the bus drivers were saying.) I finally gave up and headed back to Madrid. As I subsequently learned, another very prominent fascist, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, was exhumed from Valley of the Fallen the very day I was supposed to visit. Damn fascist! Well, you can see a bit of the Valley of the Fallen here, including the giant cross.
[Factual information is primarily gathered from Wikipedia, so you know it must be true.]
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