(OSV News) -- Catholic groups have criticized Spain's bishops for consenting to government redevelopment of a key national memorial complex near Madrid, amid fears of a continuing church decline across the traditionally Catholic country.
"Public opinion is unanimous -- this site is not to be touched," said Polonia Castellanos Flórez, president of Abogados Cristianos, a foundation of Christian lawyers.
"Although we know our bishops are under government pressure, we're nevertheless asking them to stand firm. Any further concessions in the government's favor will have devastating consequences for the church in Spain."
The Catholic lawyer spoke as Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's socialist-led government pressed ahead with a $33 million project to "re-signify" the Valle de los Caídos, or Valley of the Fallen, in Spain's central Sierra de Guadarrama, after an agreement was reached with church and Vatican representatives to modify its Catholic character.
In an OSV News interview, Castellanos said multiple rallies, petitions, lawsuits and media documentaries had been organized in defense of the complex, commemorating the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War, adding that she feared the Vatican failed to understand its importance "for all Christians, especially Spanish Catholics."
Meanwhile, another group said it was gathering signatures on a petition to the bishops' conference opposing plans for the site, officially renamed Valle de Cuelgamuros in 2022.
"The Valley of the Fallen is about to fall into the hands of the most sectarian and anti-clerical government in history," the Hazte Oir (Make your Voice Heard) association said in a statement.
"It will move from being a place of reconciliation and prayer for all those who died during the Civil War to a place of 'anti-fascist' indoctrination, full of lies by people wishing to destroy the Catholic Church."
The state-owned valley, 30 miles northwest of the capital, contains the graves of 33,000 war victims from both sides, alongside an underground pontifical basilica, Benedictine monastery and choir school, and is dominated by a 490-foot stone cross, the world's largest.
The remains of Spain's former dictator, Gen. Francisco Franco (1892-1975), were exhumed from the basilica and reinterred at Madrid's El Pardo cemetery with church approval in October 2019 under the Democratic Memory Law, which bans monuments glorifying Franco's 40-year rule.
Government plans to close the basilica and remove the Benedictines, who have run the memorial since 1958, were discussed during Sanchez's October 2024 Vatican visit, but amended following Feb. 25 Rome talks between Spain's minister of the presidency, Félix Bolaños, and the Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, allowing the monastery to remain and Catholic worship to continue.
However, the government's "re-signification" project was confirmed in a March 31 order, which said it would transform the valley into "a hub of interpretation fostering constitutional and democratic values."
An international architectural competition, headed by an inter-ministerial commission, is to be launched for the site, whose Benedictine prior, Father Santiago Cantera, stepped down in late March.
In a March 26 statement, Spain's Madrid Archdiocese said the church had "consistently defended" the valley's "religious spaces and symbols," adding that the latest accord would ensure the site remained "a refuge of prayer, reconciliation, welcome, listening, peace and spirituality."
Meanwhile, the Spanish bishops' conference spokesman, Auxiliary Bishop Francisco César García Magán of Toledo, said fellow prelates had "totally and unanimously endorsed" Madrid's Cardinal José Cobo's role as the church's "designated interlocutor" at their March 31-April 3 Madrid plenary.
However, angry protests were staged outside the plenary by citizens waving placards and rosaries, while the agreement was questioned by Archbishop Jesús Sanz Montes of Oviedo, who accused the Sanchez government of exploiting disputes over the valley as a "weapon of 'mass distraction'" to conceal its own "prevarications" and "misappropriation of public funds."
"Using the dead to win lost battles and reopening the wounds we worked so hard to heal is irresponsible and evil," the archbishop said in a weekly letter.
"It undermines coexistence in our Spanish society and easily provokes unwanted confrontation."
Castellanos told OSV News she also believed the government was using issues over the valley as a "diversionary maneuver" to cover up "multiple corruption scandals," and urged Spain's bishops to "resist further calls to negotiate."
"It's rare for the church to be tested so directly as an institution," the president of Abogados Cristianos told OSV News.
"Its leaders must stand firm in defending our fundamental right to religious freedom, which translates into defending this site. If they're brave and resolute, they'll have all Spain's Catholics on their side."
In an April 9 media interview, Cardinal Cobo said the church remained "in dialogue" with the government and "various stakeholders" in compliance with the 2007 Democratic Memory Law, which was updated in 2022.
However, protesters unfurled banners at the valley April 6, accusing Spain's bishops of lacking transparency and accountability.
The dispute coincides with continued church concerns about religious decline in Spain, after a late March survey by Pew Research suggested that 36% of Spanish citizens ages 50-plus and almost half of the 18-34 age group had abandoned religious affiliation during their lifetime, one of the highests rations worldwide.
Addressing the bishops' conference, its president, Archbishop Luis Argüello of Valladolid, said the time had now passed "when we said, 'I'm Catholic because I was born in Spain,'" adding that individualism had proved "a very powerful virus" in the country.
The archbishop said Sunday Masses were no longer celebrated in many of the country's 23,700 parish churches, where many baptismal fonts now "contain no water, due to the lack of a Christian community."
In her OSV News interview, Castellanos said the latest data highlighted the importance of standing up for Spain's "national heritage and identity."
"Once you start eliminating religious symbols, you end up eliminating Christians," the legal campaigner told OSV News.
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Jonathan Luxmoore writes for OSV News from Oxford, England.
