Spain: Day 5

June 14th, 2012

We took the train to El Escorial which is a historical residence of the King of Spain, in the town of SanLorenzo de El Escorial, about 45 kilometres from Madrid.  The train station was a busy place.

These are all the taxis waiting at the bus station.

El Escorial was started in 1563 and took only 21 years to build.

El Escorial consists of The Basilica, the Palace of Philip II, Hall of Battles, a massive library and the Pantheon of the Kings.

The Library

The Pantheon of the Kings was so interesting.  It consists of twenty-six marble sepulchers containing the remains of the kings and queens.  The sepulchers also contain the remains of royal consorts who were parents of monarchs.  The most recent remains in the sepulcher are those of King Alfonso XII, of his wife, as well as his son Juan, Count of Barcelona. Those of his and daughter-in-law Maria de las Mercedes (the mother of the current king, Juan Carlos I), lie at a prepared place called a pudridero, or the rotting room.
There are two pudrideros at El Escorial, one for the Pantheon of the Kings and the other for that of the Princes, which can only be visited by monks from the Monastery. In these rooms, the remains of the deceased are placed in a small leaden urn, which in turn will be placed in the marble sepulchers of the pantheon after the passage of fifty years, the estimated time necessary for the complete decomposition of the bodies.

The Valley of the Fallen located in the Sierra de Guadarrama 8 miles north of El Escorial. The complex was built between 1940 and 1958 and is a monument intended to commemorate all those who died on both sides during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). About 40,000 Nationalist and Republican soldiers are buried here. However, the Valley of the Fallen is inevitably associated with Francisco Franco (Spain's dictator from 1947-1975) since the late General is buried inside the basilica and he was the one who ordered its construction. The monument and its Catholic basilica remain controversial, particularly because 10% of the construction workforce were convicts, some of them prisoners.

Inside the basilica excavated in the rock.

One of the armed angels located inside the basilica

The grave of Francisco Franco