Valle de los Caidos and el Escorial

On the way to Toledo, we stopped at a few historic places. And by historic, I don’t mean the 200 year old American kind. (however this next part is fairly recent) I didn’t know much about Spanish history, and I still don’t yet, but where we went was a very controversial place right now. El valle de los caidos is a huge monument and a gigantic cross that are almost in the middle of nowhere, and overlook a beautiful valley. It’s a very peaceful place. The design is really simple, its just big squareish stones and not too many extras(except the cross, which has gargoyles and such). We were all wondering how it was constructed before they had modern equipment, since it’s far away from the cities and kindof a pain to drive to. We also didn’t know exactly what it was or what it was made for. After we were done admiring it, we sat down for a little history lesson. Maite, the director, explained that the Spanish dictator Franco, who died in the 70’s, was not allowed to be buried with all the Spanish kings in el Escorial(a small city where they’re all buried), since he wasn’t a king. Because of that, and because of how highly he thought of himself, he bought a ton of land in a much more elevated part of the country, and had basically all of the people who lost the civil war construct this giant monument where he wanted to be buried. It’s really controversial right now, because most Spanish people hated Franco, and a lot of them also had relatives who spent years or even died building that monument. Aaaand then we all felt bad for thinking it was so cool. After that, we went to el Escorial, a very cute little city, and saw the palace where the kings and all of the royal family are. We even got to go down into the crypt(suuuper creepy)(photos not allowed of course but I sneaked some), and passed by the rotting room, where the royalty/etc stays for 25 years before actually being put in the crypt. There were 3 people in there now with 15 years to go. Gross. My favorite part of the building was this room where you can stand in one corner and whisper towards the wall and the person standing in the opposite corner will hear it. It's creepy.

After all that, we headed to Toledo.

*Valle de Los Caidos Photos

*El Escorial Photos