Passing Shadows: The Angel of Valdepeñas and Spain’s Living Memory

Passing Shadows: The Angel of Valdepeñas and Spain’s Living Memory

— By David Eugene Perry

Earlier today, as Alfredo and I drove south toward Grazalema, a familiar silhouette appeared on the horizon—a broken-winged angel, its bronze long since vanished, but its presence as haunting as ever. Towering above the plain just outside Valdepeñas, the remnants of the Ángel de la Victoria y de la Paz—the Angel of Victory and Peace—jutted skyward from Cerro de las Aguzaderas, still visible to travelers on the Madrid–Cádiz road. I always take note of it. You don’t pass a ghost like that without feeling its weight. Nor can you miss its height: over 50 feet.

It’s especially present for me now as I write my new novel, Thorns of the 15 Roses (sequel to Upon This Rock) which delves deeply into the enduring legacy of Franco’s regime. Several of its characters—elderly, reflective, and burdened—lived through the Spanish Civil War and the long, silent decades that followed. Like the Angel itself, they stand as survivors and witnesses of an unresolved past.

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The Angel: Monument to Victory, Testament to Ruin

Erected in 1964 by order of Franco’s regime and sculpted by Juan de Ávalos, the same artist behind the Valley of the Fallen, the Angel was a grand gesture of triumphalism. Bronze wings spread wide, sword held high, flanked by two towering stone obelisks, it was designed to memorialize the Nationalist “martyrs” who had died during the Civil War. It loomed over the landscape like a divine seal on Franco’s version of history.

But in 1976, just months after Franco’s death, that narrative was quite literally blown apart. On the 40th anniversary of the 1936 military coup, a bomb—reportedly planted by GRAPO, an anti-Francoist militant group—detonated beneath the Angel, reducing it to a twisted skeleton of steel and broken stone. The symbolism was unmistakable.

And yet, the monument was never rebuilt. Today, the Angel’s remains still cling to the hilltop, its bronze figure gone, its obelisks cracked, and its significance suspended somewhere between abandonment and confrontation.

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Memory, Reckoning, and Law

Spain has long struggled with how to remember—or forget—its Civil War and dictatorship. Under Franco, only one version of history was permitted. After his death, silence reigned, a kind of national amnesia disguised as reconciliation.

That began to shift with the 2007 Law of Historical Memory, but it wasn’t until October 2022 that Spain enacted the more forceful Ley de Memoria Democrática (Law of Democratic Memory). This new legislation mandates:

• The removal or recontextualization of public symbols that glorify Francoism.

• The creation of a national catalogue of such symbols.

• Exhumations of mass graves, with the state taking an active role in the recovery and identification of victims.

• Historical education and documentation to ensure that Spain’s democratic memory survives.

Even monuments like the shattered Angel of Valdepeñas fall under the law’s gaze. Though damaged and inactive, its form still rises over a public highway. Under the law, such monuments must be removed, hidden from public view, or critically reinterpreted—through signage or preservation as sites of memory, not reverence.

As of the present day, there have been local debates but no formal actionreported to fully remove or reframe the site. Because it is a ruin and not actively promoted, it has so far flown under the radar compared to higher-profile sites like Valle de los Caídos (now renamed Valle de Cuelgamuros).

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Fiction Reflecting Truth

In Thorns of the 15 Roses, I explore not only the personal traumas of those who endured war, repression, and silence, but also the collective weight of memory—what is carried, what is buried, and what refuses to be forgotten. The Angel of Valdepeñas is the kind of symbol my characters would pass on a drive and fall silent before. Not out of reverence, but recognition. Grief. Rage. Memory.

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A Hilltop Reminder

Spain’s landscape is littered with ghosts—some buried, some standing defiantly against time and law. As we continue our journey through Andalusia, I’m reminded that no road here is free from history. The Angel of Valdepeñas is not just a ruin; it’s a mirror.

We have never actually stopped and hiked up to the site — although we have visited other such rocky phantasms during our journeys including twice visiting the eerie Valle de los Caidos: once while Franco and fascist icon Jose Antonio were still interred there, and once, in 2023, after their bodies had been moved. When Alfredo and I drive back along this route in September, I think we will walk up the slope.

And as long as it stands—part monument, part wound—it will continue to ask Spain, and all of us, whether memory is something we honor, or something we try to outrun.