Talk:Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos

Workers

Curious editorial tone in this entry: "slave workers" - compare this to the description in the Wikipedia "Gulag" entry which refers to the activities of the Gulag inmates as "forced labor". It would require a harshly doctrinaire mentality to maintain that the Franco Regime outdid the Soviets in brutality towards its own citizenry.

Suggest a less emotive and more even-handed description here as well, with hopes of keeping the politicization of the Wikipedia to a minimum.

Go ahead and fix it. Be bold in editing Wikipedia pages. RickK 00:05, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

When somebody works without pay and liberty is called slave workers. This is a simple fact.Milton 15:38, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

es:Valle_de_los_Caídos says:

En la construcción del monumento participaron, en un régimen brutal de explotación forzada, presos políticos republicanos que de esta forma redimieron parte de la condena que les había sido impuesta por defender sus ideas políticas. Muchos de estos presos no llegaron nunca a gozar de la libertad pues debido a las inexistentes medidas de seguridad los accidentes eran diarios y en muchos casos mortales.

"In the building of the monument, republican political prisoners participated in a brutal regime of forced exploitation, who thus redeemed part of the sentence imposed on them for defending their political ideas. Many of these prisoners did never enjoy freedom since, because of the inexistent safety resources, accidents were a daily thing and often deadly".

-- Error 03:28, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Death penalty

I don't understand how people sentenced to death can benefit of days of freedom. -- Error 23:14, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

These people were not sentenced to death (or they were sentenced and then their sentences were changed into long term imprisonment). In another article about the monument (I agree that these two should be merged) it says: the 1940 Spanish law recognized the possibility to redeem two days of conviction for each working day. This benefit was increased to six days when labour was carried out at the Holy Cross.

So they could benefit quite a lot. Of course, it does not change the fact that they were at risk of an accident, but in those times accidents during construction work were common anyway. Jasra 20:56, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Merge

Yes, the two articles should be merged. --Anagnorisis 05:11, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

50%?

This article is biased. First, the monument was built with the forced labor of POW, which should be stated more clearly. Also, while some prisoners redeemed part of their sentence with labor, this does not mean that they went there voluntarily, as the article implies.

Second, it is not true that there are "50% of each side". The identity of 50% of the people buried there is unknown. This does not mean that they are all Republicans.

What is worse, the article implies that the monument commemorates the death of Republican fighters, which is completely false. There's an estimate of 2000-4000 unnamed workers who died during the construction that are there. Some claim that many nameless bodies buried there were exhumed from the common burial grounds of victims of National "night walks". There is a huge difference between hiding crimes of war and memorializing soldiers.

Someone with thorough historical knowledge ought to edit this article. In its present form, it is a shame for the Wikipedia.