Franco’s Corpse Collection: Spooky Week #3

in the zoom machine. It's okay, I could I could like do a I could do a lesser bad as you go to the pentagram? Who really want to? It's fine, I'm not worried. I like the pentagram. That's what I'm tattooing on my children. Oh nice me too. Yeah, you haven't done the forehead though, Like a coward, you've done there. Yeah no, I mean elbow. Elbow is the way to go. So, Garrison, what do you know about mass graves? Um never been to one to my knowledge. They seem like they're not great.

Usually they're a signifier that something something not great happened. A little bit of a noopsie. Uh yeah, yeah, can be a way to hide one's mistakes, certainly. Yeah, where would you if you have to guess where the biggest mass grave in the world is? Where where would you go? For? Well, I know there's a lot of big ones in Canada. But if I'm going to guess, they call those schools in Canada, and yeah, I would say, like Russia, maybe he has the biggest mass grave. I don't know. That's

just like off the top of my head. No, it's not. It's you got a guest sharing. Oh no, I know where the biggest cemetery is, but I guess that's very different. Where is the biggest cemetery? Rock? Really? Okay? Iraq has the world and it's supposed to be haunted, so okay, this one is not haunted. But as far as I can tell, it's the biggest mass grave in the world. About thirty four thousand people. Um, And this is in Spain. Spain does not get enough credit for it its mass graves.

In fact, second only to Cambodia in the number of mass graves that it has. Spain has about a hundred and fifteen thousand people who were forcibly disappeared and are still buried in unidentified graves, but about thirty five four thousands of them are buried in the place we're going to talk about today, which is the Vadi los Cailos or the Valley of the Fallen. So the Calros is not only a mass grave, but it's also a Catholic basilica.

It's also the largest basilica in the world. And it was built by one Francisco Franco, who was the dictator of Spain from the nineteen from nine till and it was also his own grave until when Spain dug him up, put him in a helicopter, flew him across the country so that no one could like car bomb or protest or otherwise desecrate his corpse, and buried him in another grave. So that's what I want to talk about today, the

Va los cao It means Valley of the Fallen. Right. Incidentally, there's a film called Valley of the Dead, which I said, anyone else seen? This? Was it just me who decided to curse himself? Okay, just me? More of the shame. Yeah, many more people should be enjoying Spanish Civil War zombie fiction movies in which both sides come together to fight against the greater foe of the undead, and not actually a thing that happened. It's the value of the undead. Yeah,

it could be called the value of the undead. But they didn't. They didn't quite get that far. Some of the least spectacular dubbing I've ever seen in a film, like like, I'm used to watching like English stuff dubbed in Spanish, but I don't think I've before seen something Spanish dubbed in like really cringe American English. It's not it's it's not great. No it's not, but in a sense it is also great, but in you know, in in a sort of enjoyably bad sense. But yeah it is.

It is very funny. It's on Netflix. It's free malon Nazis. I think it was called in Spanish, but Valley of the Dead in in English. People should check it out if they want a different spooky film towards this Halloween. So let's talk about the value of the fallen. It was built under Francos direction as kind of this national act of atonement for the Civil War, and at first he said it was going to be memorial to both sides,

so that's like value of the all in. But well, first, it was supposed to be a memorial to the martyrs of his glorious crusade against the Reds, against Adonism, against Satanism, against all the things that are bad according to Franco's but it wasn't. Really. It was just a giant monument of Franco's national Catholic ideology, which kind of fuses the Nah and the Church in this one massive ball of terrible shit. It's designed in the neoclassical style, which fascists love.

Fascist loves the neoclassical style because they can like draw these direct lines between themselves and the empires of antiquity, right and except without the fucking paint because their cowards and fools look white because they're tiny babies. This is true. Yeah, yeah, they never did the thing where they like bedazzled their statues like the Greeks and the Romans did. Most of shame, someone should bust in there with some glit of spray

paint and tarted up a bit. I haven't done that, unfortunately, returned to tradition. Make your stat who look cringe yeh, that's how they're supposed look, don't worry that the statues do look cringe, but unfortunately they're not shiny, which is disappointing. It's built of granite, though, which I guess is kind of a return for tradition. It was built very near the Escorial, which is like the resting place and palace of the Kings of Spain. And that's because Franco wants

to draw a link between himself and Philip the Second. Right. Philip the Second was the King of Spain who, at the time that he ruled, ruled every continent that was known to European people, or rule territory, and which is great, which is not a problem, of course, it's in fact good, and an inbred old Spanish dude was ruling over places that he couldn't really conceive of and had never visited, and there are no problems with that. Okay. So work

begins on Vils Cairos in ninety forty. Right, it's a year after the end of the Spanish Civil War, and Franco decrees that he's going to make this memorial to the glorious national crusade against the Reds, and unbelievably, he wanted work to be finished in a year, which obviously he's not operating in like reality because he's a piece of ship. But it took twenty years to build, right, so it was off by yeah, big construction, understand, Francisco Franco.

And like King Philip, he could have plunder the entire labor and capital of the America's to build his folly, and instead he relied on the forced labor of about twenty thousand prisoners of war. These were former Republicans, right,

and they were forced to build a church. Obviously many of them did not like the church, and we're not really very fond of building what is now the biggest Catholic cathedra in the world, actually, and it has the biggest cross in the world, which it shocked me that the biggest cross in the world wasn't in the United States, but I'm sure Ted Cruz is actively working on it

as we speak. Yeah. I feel like if you like walked around my hometown and told people at the biggest cross in the world was a Catholic one, they would immediately spent twenty trillion dollars building a bigger one. Yeah, I mean, the only thing that could convince them to defund the police would be yeah, yeah, owning the Catholic cross. Maybe we should put that, Maybe we should enter that into the discourse on true social or something. That Franco,

of course, is not the only person buried there. Right right next to Franco in the center of the basica is his friend Jossi Antonio Primo de dri Veda um Primo died exactly thirty nine years before Franco on the twenty November, and he because he was killed by the Republicans, which is based on good and and he has just little gravestone there next to Franco, which of course has not created any problems. After Spain it sort of began

to transition to democracy and Franco died. It's of course not a bad thing to put a giant monument to fascism and Francoism, and nobody is going to turn up there and do a fascism in the years afterwards. Oh yeah, it's a little bit unfortunate. So there's every day at eleven o'clock a priest sas a mass, and at that mass you can generally find old people who will sort of mill around for a while and then quietly start

doing fascist salute, which is not, which is not great. Yeah, to be comfortable first, yeah, well you got yeah, you gotta get like you've got to sample the vibes and then do a fascist and the vibes here are probably not great. They also have acquired to any acquire of small children who sing why because of fucking what? Because

everything about this is cursed. There's a film, there's a film about these old children who go to a quote unquote traditional school at the Basilica, which I can imagine it's great, and they learn all kinds of wonderful things

about critical race theory. Yes. So the priests also says a prayer for the fate of Spain and the blessed blessed martyrs, which really really is wonderful and perhaps points in the direction of the complicity of the Catholic Church in looks of the war crimes that we're going to talk about today. Second consecutive episode where the Catholic Church possible for the whole thing. Wow, I can't believe the

Catholics did anything bad. No, it's shocking, isn't it, given their history of being kind and good and generally respectful towards people they disagree with. So true James. Yeah, no problems with the Catholic Church. So this particular church is hun It's just a giant hole in a granite ridge, right again, a giant hole cup by the Fourth labor

of Prisoners of War. It's called the Value the Fallen because today it houses the remains of about thirty three thousand people, and this is what makes it the biggest

mass grave in the world. Right. The monuments Register includes many of their names, and it has the motto kaidos portiosi Espana, so fallen for God in Spain, which conveniently overlooks the fact that most of the people there didn't like God very much and really didn't like the version of Spain that's being presented here either, right, because the vast majority of them were Republicans, people who would fought against Franco's idea of Spain and the civil war, and

the bodies that came there really kind of came there in two distinct waves. And so, like I said, Spain has about underd and fourteen thousand odd people who are buried in unidentified graves. Right. The vast majority of these people are Republicans who were killed by Francois forces. But

some of them are not. Some of them are Francoists, Catholics, Carlist other like right wing fascist type people who were killed by the Republicans right now, the bulk of those people were dug up and identified by the Franco Wish regime in the time that he was in power, and many of them were moved to the Value of the

Fallen and they're identified there. But the majority of the people in the Valley of the Fallen were Republican people whose remains were taken without their consent from mass graves where they were victims of Franco's terror right and they were moved to the Valley of the Fallen to be

some kind of like weird pyramid sacrificed ritual. I don't have a complete grasp of Catholicism, but I certainly don't understand this ship too sort of I don't know, make make Franco's temple more like spectacular and it's very strange, it's it's it's very cruel, right. I want to quote from the BBC article in two thousand and eleven that was written about one of these people, Jorge Valdrico so Um, Joe Vadrico Canales was taken from his home in August six in the middle of the night and shot by

a Fascist execution squad. His town had fallen to the uprising and he had been singled out as a socialist. In ninety nine. His remains were dug from a well and moved to the valley of the fallen More than thirty thousand warded from both sides of transferred there on Franco's orders. For me, it's excruciatingly painful that my father's remained from a place built to the glory of the

victors in the military coup, the Fausto Annales. It feels like a double crime, first when he was executed, then when they moved his body without our permission to a place which is totally inappropriate. H So that experienced, sadly, is far from uncommon. Right between three, Like I said about thirty these graves were dug up. Lots of these were like shallow roadside graves. They were wells. Some people were buried in graveyards and they were transferred to the value.

Sometimes they weren't transferred in their entirety. Incidentally, that like they did. These mass graves are not well organized, so like to perhaps give some context here, like these they began in Spain, began exhuming these mass graves in two thousand seven, Right, there was a historical memory law past, and they're often just just jumbles of corpses and bones. Right, some of these mass graves contained like a thousand and people.

I don't imagine them being like, hey, we're going to do a mass grave, now, you know what I mean? Like there's kind of digging a hole putting bodies in it. Yeah, yeah, it's fair to say, yeah, no one made a good plan, which is unfortunate, isn't it. But yeah, they like they would were they would get all the people who they identified as socialist or or feminist or otherwise objectionable to their vision of spanishness and then kill them all. Yeah, and then put them in a hole because they consider

them to be less than human. And they seemingly seemed to have dived into the hole and grab some bits and pieces and move them to the value of the fallen at some point. Wait, so wait, we like how are did okay? Like Like what what actually? Like? How are like the bodies in the valley of the Fallen? Like held? Like what are are they just like, are

they in like caskets? They just dumped them in another hole? No, there are like there are like various it seems like there are various different Like some of them are in these little stone there are like these little stone tomb looking things. But I don't think that those actually contain the remains. I think they're in these various pits. So they just it's another they moved from one mass grade.

It's another mass grave that they build a sacrifice temple over. Yeah, so they're now beginning to exhume the already exhumed bodies front that. So they're now digging up the valley of the fallen right to to identify these remains. And Catalonia has a d n A registry, So if you believe that you're it would be like people of our generations grandparents. If you believe that your grandparents are in a mass grade that they would disappeared, then you can register your

DNA And they tested against the mass graves that they're excuming. Well, so that's how they that's how they identify people. And Christie, do you know what won't dig a mass grave and throw your grandparents in it? I cannot Yeah, Black Rifle Coffee company. Well, I was just gonna go with Coca Cola. But that's three options and we're back. Hopefully. There was no reference to mass graves in those adverts, but we can't promise you that. Sadly, they also can't promise you

that there's mass graves they didn't talk about. Yeah, that's probably more likely, isn't it. Anyway, enjoy that advert for Nestley. Moving on, some of these mass graves have been identified by a Spanish nonprofit group called Innovation and Human Rights, and they actually have this incredible data set specifically on the Valley of the Fallen, where you can look up the location of the corpses that are there, right, so like where did these where the of the remains that

have been identified from where they come? And three thousand, nine d and two corpses. That's about seventy bus loads of dead people. If you want to imagine that they came from this small town of Taigona, which is where I used to live. That's that's not a big town. I was trying to think of like a California town to contextualize it by it, but I think most people

would have heard of towns that's more. I this, despite being a pretty rural area, the camp to Tarragon that can take contributed about the corpses that remain in the valley, and that's probably because it's part of Catalonia. Catalonia was. Spain is a is a multi national state, so there are lots of nations within Spain, like Catalonia and the bas Country being the ones that people are most familiar with.

Franco particularly hated Catalan separatists, and so as part of this ongoing punishment of Catalonia for like trying to leave Spain during the Civil War, the Francois dug up the remains of the people they'd already murdered and moved them to a long way from Catalonia right the Vadlos Gilos is near Madrid. Conditions for people who built the valley were pretty appalling to the workers and their families lived

in these shacks. According to archaeologists who exsume them last year, families lived in nine meter square shacks with no water electricity. They made shoes out of old tires, and they had no windows or no heating. Their beds were made of stone, and they and their children suffered from malnutrition. It's it's not particularly rare for people to have suffered from malnutrition in Spain after the Civil War, this period was called

the Years of Hunger. But even so, it seems like there was particular cruelty applied to these people, many of whom were serving sentences for things like forming unions or forming student political movements right like that. They were like they hadn't done anything wrong, that they were the victims of a totalitarian state. So one of those people is

Nicolas Sanchez al Bognosum. He was interviewed being a Catline newspaper and Nathionale, and he talks a lot about his memories there, and incidentally, he escaped after a few months with the help of Norman Mailer's sister. Yeah yeah, oh yeah, based Norman. She's incredibly based actually, like yeah, she she like helped him escape and then ferried him across the Pyrenees to France, where he escaped into exile and Argentina

and lived for decades. And the only good well, okay, I was gonna I was gonna make an only good Argentini and exile joke, but I probably probably is actually genuinely worth mentioning that a lot like a lot of people who were Jews fled to Argentina to like right before wor War two. Yeah, and that's a huge thing. And you get people like calling them Nazis because they're fucking dumb as ship and it's like, guys, come fucking like if you can't tell between the Nazi and the

people they were killing, like please stop. Okay, this has been my interlude about people doing this ship because oh my god, yeah, maybe maybe don't cast his persons, maybe do a little bit of reading first. So yeah, a lot of people, a lot of them end up in in Argentine exile. Actually, ironically, Argentina also claims universal jurisdiction.

So what we've seen in the last few years it's like Spanish historical memory groups trying to trying to get people who perpetrated crimes against humanity under Franco extradited to Argentina to be questioned, which which is also very funny given that Argentina has its own legacy of crimes against humanity, right,

and Spain does his ship too. Actually, Spain claims universal jurisdiction and we'll try and like extradite people who have done crimes against humanity in formerly colonized countries without Spain has not faced up to its own crimes against his own population. You know, I will say I am entirely down for like intentionally starting some sort of like Spain Argentina like ship fast where both of them like get piste off with each other and start trying each other's

war criminals. That's really funny. I would be better. I would be even more impressed to see, Um, are you familiar with who Balfa Gathon is? See that weird prosecutor guys? Yes? Yes, yes, yeah, who tried to who tried to try US officials for crimes against humanity for the things they didn't guantanamobey. Yeah, it would be outstanding. I would love to see like Spain and the United States come to blows over like

their respective crimes against humanity. It would be wonderful, Sandy, And like in Iraq too, I think he like, um, what was it called that? The do they call it enhanced interrogation techniques that they were using when they were like elextrocuting people in search? Yeah, so like he tried to prosecute people for that, sadly, like everything else in Spain. He strayed a little bit too close to looking at the corruption of the Spanish state and lost his position,

which is a shame. He did some pretty chuddly ship himself, like he very clearly presided at betrials where people had very clearly been tortured and was just like, oh, that's interesting to see you in the witness box giving this testimony. I'm not going to note the fact that you've like very clearly been beaten to ship with a night stick. Yeah, Spain a country with no problems, famously, and so yeah,

Albunos escapes. Actually, there's a film called the Los Angeles Barbaras, the Barbara's Years, I guess the Barbarian Years, which which looks at his escape, and he was one of only two people to be escaped. But people died building the Valley of the Fallen right and then were buried there in this weird monument to to Francoism. So, like I said, Spain really hasn't dealt with its legacy of of mass

murder right. Um. And it never really had a Truth and Reconciliation commission, never really dealt with the amount of people murdered after the war. Um. And it's really only in the last like ten or fifteen years at Spain has begun digging up these mass graves. So um and the pedroal Sanchez and the Socialist government, they've they've begun

doing more to deal with this. In two thousand and seven and earlier, Spanish Socialist government passes thing called the Law for Historical Memory, and the Law for Historical Memory funded the recovery of the memory of the Civil War right. And you can draw very obvious parallels between how Spain has dealt with its civil war and its tradition to democracy, and how the United States has dealt with its Civil war right. And you will see like that there is

um do you got do you know what voxes? Yeah, they're they're like the insane for the right party in Spain, yes, and so fucking cringe, holy shit, even for the standards of far right parties, like oh my fucking god, oh god, yeah, do they wear silly outfits? Oh yeah, I would imagine, So I don't I don't think. I don't think there's ever been a picture of them like where they haven't

been in like the weirdest looking ship. Because occasionally some of the like Spanish fascists were some pretty gay outfits, and it's really funny. Are you talking about the phone Legion, the ones who were like if Tom of Finland created a military Yes, yes, that is exactly who I'm referring to. Yeah, okay, yeah, they are not so much outright fascists as a fashy military unit. Yeah, but yes, uh yeah, it's I know, yeah,

absolute first trap. Just like if people should google photos if they haven't seen them, it'll occasionally pop up on like Twitter or something where people will find these incredibly butch dudes who like, like, it's not that they've unbuttoned their shirts just so just that their pecks are ripping

out of their shoes. No, it's their shirts are not equipped with buttons, because it ye like, to be in that unit, you have to be so incredibly buff that you you start buttoning your shirt from the navel down, and which, to be fair, is more appropriate in Spain. I remember, like I used to teach in Spain and then I taught in the United States and coming back and being like, oh, I really have to change the way I dress to be appropriate for an American audience. Yeah.

The to get back to mass graves and away from tactical first traps. The what Spain didn't have right was like Franco didn't get hung upside down from a gas station and beaten with sticks in the face. Right, more is the shame. There's still time, right body, his body is still available for beating. You know, maybe maybe they would be the worst thing. But Spain never really faced

its past. Right, So in seven and amnesty law was passed which prevented any criminal investigation into the crimes committed in the Franco years. Um statues of Franco, some of them were not moved until like the last five or ten years, and when they were removed, it was like the government just went in in the night and scooped them up and no one really said anything and then

they were gone. And so like Spain has only really really recently entered into this period like that we call it second transition, and that's like it's transition from Spain began transitioning to democracy in right, but what we call the period after that, it's more of a post dictatorship then, like a complete democratic transition in Spain was still processing. As you can see, right, many of its crimes under Franco, and it's it's really only begun to process those in

the last few years. So that gets us up to the oh that I think election of Pedro Sanchez right in the Socialist government, and um, their decision to exhume Franco. Alright, so Franco's Franco's lying in this monument. Right, it's the biggest mass grave in the world, and on the day of his death, on the twenty February every year, it's

it's a gathering place for fascists. Right, So, Franco and Primo de la Vera both died on the same day, and fascists and castalist both love this this kind of weird spiritual magic shit and really really yeah, yeah, I've heard, I know there are some books about it apparently, huh yeah, okay, So yeah, it's it's said that both of them have a funnest for this stuff. So then both dying on the same day, it's an extremely fucking cursed thing that

has led to sucks. M hmm. It sucks if you if you ever have to go near this place on the twenty November, which I don't recommend. Oh god, I could only imagine that must be that must be the worst time. Yeah, because it's all because it's all of the nerdiest Nazis like yeah, it's like yeah, yeah. It's like if if like nerdy like Nazi internet people had a real life place to gather and just openly do

fucking fascist salutes, that sounds like it sounds horrible. The fascist with a calendar, like no, yeah, the calendar who's like into praying. It's like yeah, yeah, really really really into praying. I'm just I'm just gonna say this, if the if the anarchists were in charge of it wouldn't be having fucking stupid, cringe prey fascist meetings. This can

be prevented, then can rise a third time. Sure, but it is the nerdiest thing ever to think about a fascist like updating their Google calendar being like, yeah, for all their spiritual holidays where their leaders died, why do they always celebrate the day that their leaders died. It's always the weirdest for us. It's a death cult, right, like, like, like their leader dying is this is the moment when

they finally expressed the pure core of fascism. That's true, that that's actually a really good observation that actually is is more on the point than what it should be, right, Yeah, like immortalizing them on that day? Yeah, I mean was the slogan of the did the African the African Army like yeah, I think it spains for a legion actually like long lived death and they called themselves se yes, that is their slogan. They called themselves the um what's

it called, the Fiances of Death. Yeah, they're they're they're they're all gay because they're all married to death, which is pretty metal. They're also kind of fashy. But yeah, that that that does really showcase the whole death cult aspect of fascism. Yeah, you know, you know what, he isn't a gay neckcromancer. Again, we can't promise. I wish, I wish we could advertise some more recollect I would I would be in my element. Yeah. I've just done an ad read for a couple of them, as I

should have should have. Let you know, I am the so jealous. That's all that's all I want out of life. Yeah, please enjoy these gay necromancy products and services. Okay, we're back. I hope you enjoyed that as much as we did, so I think credibly cringe and just Boomerie fascist cerevation on Franco's death and primer der Rivera's death on November always happened at the videos Caidos right, they would turn up in two thousand and ten Spain band like fascist symbolism.

But this hasn't really stopped fascist doing fascist symbolism right, including bringing their for land flags, giving it the fascist salute, marching and just generally doing like cringe like where where like r OTC cosplay meet meets the Catholic Church stuff on the twenty November of a year at Franco's grave, and its like there are always flowers on Franco's grave, like you can't go there on a given day and not find someone like lamenting the fact that Franco is

dead and they can no longer just disappear people they disagree with. Right, It's ship and so incidentally an amusing sort of side effective. Do you remember the storm area fifty one like Facebook thing? Yeah, the right area challenge like last year or two years ago, yea three years ago, a lot longer ago. It does it also it also feels like a very thing. Yeah. So the Spanish version of this was Invade via los Calos with the slogan that like if the state, the state can't get him,

if we get him first. I don't think this was an anarchist attempt to steal his body, but like massive respect of it was. I think it was just some extremely online people doing something that they thought was and actually is funny, which was yeah, like unfortunately it didn't really come too much because they planned to do this on a twenty November and in October Franco's body was removed from the Valley of the Fallen. Okay, see this this is this is the thing with all of these things.

That's the same thing with the fucking stop Coney thing. Like the problem that all of these groups have if they want to is they always set their date too far out, Like you gotta give it like max. It has to be like two weeks out, because if it's any longer than that, you moment momentum, Yeah, you get scooped. So look, if if you, if you, if you, if you want to seize the body of a dead dictator and throw them into a canal, you have to move fast.

And that's why I'm announcing that for for November nineteenth, we're all now we probably should not go to Russia to have fun with Trotsky's body. Should be Yeah, we're going Trotsky's body in Russia. Yeah, I thought so. I know, I've seen back from Mexico. I have had I've had friends that have gone places to make fun of Trotsky's body, um lenning his body, lending his bodies up for grabs, like okay, it's just sitting there. Well, maybe get I

think we should start small. Let's encourage the fans of the podcast between now and what we got right, but now in eleventh of November, right, go after Papa doctor Valier. Get get him start you know that, and then move on from there. Okay, it is it's a Mexico. Yeah, you're right closer to the sort of geographical heartland, and we don't need to go into a war zone. So yeah, and the middle of November, we're all going to be going going to Mexico road trip, yep, field trip. Yeah,

let's go. You know, I will say, there is something genuinely interesting here about the way that like, okay, so you look at sort of fascism, sorry, you look at fascism's death drive and the way that it sort of

like treats his money means to death. And then like you look at the way that every single sort of like like all this day socialist regimes, like it's not so much that they have a death drive, but it's like they're like all of them, Like I learned this recently, Like so I knew that they didn't too, that they'd like embalmed Stalin, right, and like, well they involved Lenin, they inbalved mao. Yeah, they also learned they did it

to Ho Chi Minh too. Yeah, it's just like they did it to like all of these people, and it's like there there's there's this sort of weird like almost in version of it where it's like like fascism is based sort of on like you know, like on on the sort of totalizing worship of death, whereas stalism is like it has this kind of inversion of it where it's like it's based on like a kind of like eternal life for their leaders in this also incredibly bizarre way.

And don't want to be like all of Europe is determined by its previous like totalitarian religions. But there's there's something there's something orthodox about the way they've done the dead Russian dudes so I'm wanna talk about Franco's corps a little bit, and then I want to end with something else, because I don't want to just focus on Spanish fact ships because they suck and I hate them and I am sad that they are not all dead. But Franco is. So Franco's family weren't allowed to use

the Spanish flag on his coffin. Yeah, so in staid, they fucking got the Franco with flag, right, the old nationalist flag, which because they have filth, they did that. Instead, they carried his coffin onto a helicopter. They flew in by helicopter to Madrid, where the services provided over by a priest who is the son of Lieutenant Colonel Antonio to head on Molina, the man who led the failed

one coup that attempted to topple Spain's young democracy. And great to see this continuation of these elites right like, this is a this is a country which has of course moved on completely from its civil war and dictatorship on the post of side. Franco is now buried with his wife and he is very near to Luis Carlo Blanco, who people will remember as a podcast alumni in Spain's first astronaut and so I was going to quote Vox, but I won't because they fucking suck. And now I

want you quote Box. You should just like throw fruit at them, and I think that's like, that's not an actionable threat, right, just uh sure, don't throw like any fruit sort of potentially lethal, right, like like a large watermelon or something potentially fatal like just to banana or if you know the Vox representatives like allergic to a fruit, you throw it at them and gets on their face and they die and it gets blamed on James. We all get taken into a year's long lawsuit and then

we all lose their jobs. Don't do that. Don't do that. No blame someone else for that. You can if you are directing the police to me in Spain, they can contact me by Twitter DM by Twitter is at at Chopped at Chappo Trappers. Yep, that's where you can find me. Yeah yeah, sell traps. Okay. So of course Fox make exactly the same bullshit destroying history argument that the Confederates making in the United States. It doesn't make them anymore

right because they're in fact wrong. But incidentally, someone else died on November and that is one boilivant order duty right. Unlike Franco, he's not buried in a monument made both fucking slaves. He's buried alongside other anarchists in mow in Barcelona. You can visit his grave there. It's very cool. You can always meet interesting people hanging around his grave. And if you're in Bathonia, you should do it. Drutti died in the middle of the Battle of Madrid, like so

many other Spanish anarchists. He died. It's lunclear actually, if he died because someone negligently discharged their own weapon into his back, and which seems to be the most likely case, or leading a frontal charge on a machine gun, which which is how so many Spanish anarchists died because they were so utterly con vinced if they're incredible, like and they're not wrong either, they were right about most things, but like you get, their willingness to die for anarchism

was perhaps a little bit problematic. Well, I mean this is this is like a thing across the whole history of anarchism, Like like like one of the reasons the Russian Revolution went the way they did was that like it's like the sort of like first crop of Russian anarchists, like the moment the White are formed, immediately just went to the front lines and all got killed, and like Lenning and meanwhile learning the Trotsky are like fucking Chilling

and Lenning like fucking Patrick Grading, Like yeah, which exactly what happened in Spain, right, like Ferrara, all these people like get to the front lines and immediately start killing fascists. Meanwhile, tanky people, I was gonna say something else, um like spending their time plotting and scheming to from becoming a completely fucking irrelevant political force in Spain to taking over in a year and a half because they are the only people are willing to provide weapons and many of

the anarchists have it. What were you going to call take people? What were you going to call take it? Just it makes me angry. I know, it's just gonna just that's that is that is an ovisive answer. Yeah, I was just gonna say scum or filth or British swear word I can't use on the podcast because of fans American people, which is fine. Yeah, it's disappointing. I don't want to be canceled by work mob. Okay, yeah

he did Australian moments. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I nearly went full of Australian which, like I've done it before on television and it just doesn't end well, all right, uh in Spanish not English, which also a Spanish word. Twenty November in Spain this year it will be like what three weeks when people are listening to this, some fascion ship head if you live in a town in Spain, will be walking around doing shitty fascist things. And people who live in Spain of course very aware of this.

But I wanted to finish it said with another thing that anti fascists in Spain doing November. So in the fifte November this year, anti fascists all over Spain will be gathering to remember fifteen years without Carlos Palomino. People might not know who Carlos Palomino is, but I want

to very briefly recap his story to finish up. So on the eleventh of November two thousand and seven, Carlos Palomino and about a hundred other anti fascists got on the subway in Madrid to counter protest a right wing rally and Luca, an immigrant neighborhood that's home to mcgrid's Chinatown today. On the train on the way there, he ran into a twenty four year old spanage soldier, or says wait Este banners. Uh. Estebanez was dressed in clothes.

I mean, I don't want to talk about the brand actually, because we shouldn't hype market Nazis. But the clothes showed he was a far right skinhead. Right. Carlos Palomino notes is Estebanez takes offense at Carlos Palomino, noting his Nazi clothes and stabs him with a machette. Yeah, he stabbed someone else as well, but unfortunately Carlos dies pretty quickly. He was sixteen years old at the time of his death.

He was the only child of his mother, and he lived with his mom, who was separated from his dad and his grandmother. And it affected his mother, as one can imagine, pretty terribly right the loss of loss of her young son, and as a result, his mother has

become a prominent anti fascist activist in Spain. She founded the Association of the Victims of Fascist, racist and Homophobic Violence, and ten years after his death, a thousand people turned out and a memorial to him, and ever like, ever since he died, every year you'll see these massive rallies in Spain of anti fascists And if you've ever seen, do you remember, like a year or so ago, there was this video going around Tricher and there was a

group of people chanting like a kiss anti fascist us, here are the anti fascists. I see such videos on Twitter all the time, so I don't, I don't, I don't know, okay, it like it gained relevance among people who I've never seen engaging with Spain in any thing before. It was a huge rally one thousands of people came out to remember him, and I'm sure thousands of people will this year too. Like it with Spain's like Spain's right for a long time tried to couch itself in

terms of the neoliberal center right. Yes, so like the Partido Popular would see itself in terms of like maybe the Tories in Britain or Editories are pretty uh pretty mental, but like this this kind of neoliberal European right. Yeah, and it it broadly sort of wanted to see itself

as part of this like post fascist European right. But in recent years it's just taken this disk swing towards the hard right like Vox has emerged, and even the Partido Popular, which would have seen itself as like neoliberal right, have tried to like outbox Vox and they're now like just openly standing Francoism again. And in this climate, anti fancism has also seen itself resurgent. I guess we're an

anti fascist. Identities in Spain are more relevant or more common than they would have been ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, something like that. And as a result, these memorials for Carlos have become bigger and bigger for a year, and so I wanted to end with a letter his mum rate to global anti fascist collectives in two and eleven.

In our memories, all the anti fascist victims will always exist who fighting for a world of equality, dignity, freedom and social rights were killed by the ideas of intolerance and fascism. The memory will exist for all those victims who, due to their different cultures, religions or sexual orientations, were murdered by the same murdering hands who hate those who are different. Now it's time to continue working against hate that it is the best tribute we can offer. Their

struggles were not in vain. We will continue the path, although they are no longer with us in every action of anti Fascy struggle. They're inside and in each and every one of our hearts, which I thought was really poignant. His mother is amazing. Yeah, this whole thing fucking breaks me. Like I was. This was a time when, like I too, was being a teenage anti fascist in Spain, and this is someone who's like almost exactly my age, and obviously

it isn't alive anymore. And yeah, I'd encourage people to read more about him. I'd normally share these events on social media when they happen. And yeah, this is extremely sad and continues to be extremely sad because Spain refuses to face up to it past the dictatorship. You can look at where Franco's grave is, organized a protest and executed within two weeks and toss him in the river if you want to be very proud of you. That is absolutely illegal thing to do, and I would be

prosecuting in Spain, but yeah it did. Any Spain has prosecuted everyone from sucking clowns to puppeteers. Now it's now. It's serious. When you start coming out of the clowns is when I I started getting personally consulted. We need to do our episode on clown Block soon, don't we we do. I can put on I have clown Block right behind me. Okay, yeah yeah, And then the British police will send someone undercover in your clown movement for five years who will marry one of you and let

maybe a silly gesture, leave me alone. No, not in Britain. It's a crime, all right. Uh, okay, that's been a podcast. Few crimes. Okay. It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.