Edith Muleiro Smoyer is a linguistic anthropologist and member of MIRCo, she graduated from the Publicly Oriented Anthropology Program in June of 2026.
This article aims to describe what occurs when a diverse group physically explores a space, and how that encounter engages in the present with the monument’s sedimented meanings. It does not attempt to narrate the history of the Valle de Cuelgamuros, which has already been extensively documented by other authors.
On May 16, 2026, we visited the Valle de Cuelgamuros, organized by students of the Master’s in Publicly Oriented Anthropology (MAOP) at the Autonomous University of Madrid and MIRCo. Dr. David Divita guided the visit, as a visiting researcher with MIRCo and professor at Pomona College. David has spent more than 8 years conducting ethnographic research on the Valle, visiting the site and following public debates about its meaning since 2018: through Franco’s exhumation (2019), the passage of the Democratic Memory Law (2022), and the recent competition to design the monument’s resignification. Last year he published an article on this research in History and Anthropology, “Remaking a Monument: The Troubled Meaning of Fascist Remains in Contemporary Spain.”
During the visit, the group reflected on the meaning of resignification, and on how monuments like this one contribute (or fail to contribute) to the construction of democratic memory in Spain. The visit began with a brief presentation before entering, then leading to a self-guided portion, with the goal of noticing and later discussing what aspects of the space each person was “oriented” or “disoriented” towards (Ahmed, 2006). Different groups formed along the way, which created the opportunity for small groups to discuss shared knowledge and ways of seeing.
Upon entering, the first thing that collectively caught the group’s attention were the buckets placed throughout the basilica to catch water from leaks (caused by humidity seeping through the stone), accompanied by yellow signs reading “caution.” The red figure on the signs creates a stark contrast with the religious imagery behind them. The water which falls into these buckets creates an in situ metaphor for the monument’s inability to bear the very weight of its own meaning. Despite the institutional effort to control the narrative, drops keep seeping through: a fitting symbol for a monument that cannot fully contain the bodies that lie behind its walls. As Francisco Ferrándiz documents, between 1959 and 1983 a massive transfer of remains took place, including bodies from Republican mass graves moved without their families’ consent (2011).
We made a group stop at the site where Franco’s body had once been buried, noting the difference in stone color as the only indication of the recent absence of his remains (since 2019). Divita highlights this lack of signage at the gravesite in his article, citing archaeologist Alfred González-Ruibal (2018), who argues that “it is not entirely correct to say that one leaves without understanding anything: the absence of discourse is, in itself, a discourse.” In his work on semiotic landscapes, Divita describes both the buckets and the difference in the floor stones as examples of how the state’s efforts to resignify the monument run parallel to coincidental changes, many of which have simply resulted from the passage of time. Pointing out and naming these interventions is no small matter: it forms part of the monument’s process of resignification, reinforced by the fact that it was a central point of observation for the majority of participants when they walked in.
The group, made up of UAM students, their family and friends, and MIRCo members, included Spaniards from different regions as well as international participants, so the collective perspective that emerged reflected a real diversity of viewpoints. At the end of the visit, we gathered to raise questions and open a discussion, sharing photos of what the official “resignification” project will look like, decided through a competition won by the project “La Base y la Cruz” (MIVAU, 2025). To our right, as we talked, a fellow participant noticed a family taking photos doing the fascist salute in front of the Valle de Cuelgamuros. It was an unsettling reminder that the lack of explanation and discourse around such a monument does not leave an empty space, but instead allows dangerous discourses to persist, and even grow, unchecked.
Publicly Oriented Anthropology: Discourse and Power
This visit connects with the coursework of students in the Master’s in Publicly Oriented Anthropology (MAOP), and exemplifies the kind of situated work the program promotes: thinking theory through practice, presenting results accessibly in order to engage in direct dialogue with broad and diverse publics. As was written in a student post on the MAOP blog:
“The ‘public’ [is] a commitment of the discipline beyond the closed circuits of academia, in direct dialogue with broad and diverse publics such as citizens, local communities, social movements, the media, policymakers, and, especially, students — seeking not only to describe social life but also to reframe debates and transform collective understandings of social problems. For the anthropologist, ‘public’ means positioning oneself against a self-referential academic style […] and producing knowledge that is accessible, transparent, and useful, aimed at reducing human suffering and benefiting others. It is an ethical and political choice that situates anthropology in the shared space between theory and practice, working with — not only for — different publics” (uamblog, 2025).
Visits like this one are an exercise in public anthropology of situated discourse, outside of academic spaces, which connects with MIRCo’s work on discourse and power. This kind of tour brings aspects of Spain’s past into the present, allowing students to contextualize different sides of the debate today and to form opinions about the future of this space and of other similar monuments, both in Spain and elsewhere. This should be valued as an act of community memory work: a critical, constructive counterpoint to the official “resignification” of a space.
Final Reflections
After the visit, students responded to a brief survey about the experience, sharing their experience of walking through the Valle de Cuelgamuros. The responses, represented in the wordcloud (image 4), reflect the strong affective charge of the place, associated with sensations such as cold, silence, oppression, and granite.
To analyze these responses, we draw on the work of Sara Ahmed, in particular her concept of affective economies (Ahmed, 2004). For Ahmed, emotions do not reside fixedly within bodies or objects; rather, they accumulate and circulate, and certain objects become “sticky” due to the affective value attached to them. The emotions and sensations described by students have become “stuck” to the Valle de Cuelgamuros, filling in the silences that surround it. Even though, or perhaps precisely because, the monument includes no historical explanation, the space still communicates something visceral.
Ahmed’s work on queer phenomenology also offers a way of understanding this visit to the Valle, as mentioned earlier in the description of the tour (2006). She writes about orientation, and how bodies “orient” themselves in space in relation to the objects and narratives within their reach. The Valle’s own design orients visitors toward a particular historical narrative. Ahmed also proposes a “politics of disorientation,” in which losing one’s bearings can open space for other histories. Walking through this space with a critical eye can also be read as an exercise in deliberate disorientation, in order to explore what other histories and bodies have been systematically left out of view.
This visit is part of an independent initiative carried out in coordination with MIRCo and students of the Master’s in Publicly Oriented Anthropology. It is not tied to a specific funded project.
References
Ahmed, S. (2004). Affective Economies. Social Text, 22(2), 117–139.
Ahmed, S. (2006). Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Duke University Press.
Fernandez Rodriguez, D, Cosculluela, J y Muleiro Smoyer, E (2025) “¿Sabes quién es Borofsky?”, uamblog, https://blog.antropologiauam.net/sabes-quien-es-borofsky
Divita, D. (2025). Remaking a monument: The troubled meaning of fascist remains in contemporary Spain. History and Anthropology, 36(4), 658–680. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2025.2476444
Ferrándiz, F (2011). Guerras sin fin: guía para descifrar el Valle de los Caídos en la España contemporánea. Política y Sociedad, 48 (3), 481-500
González-Ruibal, A (2018). “Museums and Material Memories of the Spanish Civil War: An Archaeological Critique” In Public Humanities and the Spanish Civil War, edited by Alison Ribiero de Menezes, Antonia Cazorlo-Sánchez, and Adrian Shubert, 93-114. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
MIVAU (2025). Concurso de Proyectos para el Mural de Cuelgamuros. https://www.mivau.gob.es/arquitectura-edificacion/arquitectura/concurso-de-arquitectura-memorial-cuelgamuros
