La Almudena, cemetery with bus

"If you like walking around cemeteries, you must be missing something. God knows what cemeteries are for", is the majority opinion of people. They don't even have to tell me that for me to know that they think so. Anyway, I like to go there. There is always something to learn. When I am in Madrid, I do that in Nikolina's company, which, unlike me who goes just to look around, also does serious research on the subject of what we see there. That part of the history and atmosphere of the past that is not recorded in books or preserved in museums is found in cemeteries, carved in stone, left next to tombstones, on monuments and objects symbolically laid in silence, left by different people for the most different reasons. Some kind of interactive museum. After all, one can learn as much about a society through the way it mourns as it can through the way it rejoices.

This time we went to visit the cemetery of La Almudena, the largest cemetery in Madrid, which, with an area of 120 hectares, is probably the largest cemetery in Western Europe. About five million people were buried there, approximately the same number as live in Madrid today: politicians, writers, bullfighters, anarchists, football players, democrats, entertainment singers, fascists, communists, bankers, Catholics, atheists, monarchists... everything that is necessary for a modern society to function. It has this necropolis and its own bus. Line 110 travels through the cemetery itself, where, among the monuments and tombstones, it stops at several stations. Especially on weekends, this bus is full of well-dressed and gilded Madrid grandmothers who come to clean the tombstones of their loved ones from dust and oblivion.

We intend to visit the main points in the cemetery, and we are particularly interested in the Civil Cemetery and the pantheon dedicated to the Blue Division. We are aware that on such an expanse, anything more than that would be a bonus. The sky is unreal blue, as it can only be in Madrid, due to the fact that Madrid is the capital with the highest altitude in Europe. We wander. Even with the help of navigation, it is not easy to find your way, as we are like in a labyrinth where everything looks alike. In the electric car, as quietly as a ghost, the cemetery guard appears and warns us that Nikolina's car, Žuža, is not on a leash. We take advantage of his pause to ask him how to get to the civilian cemetery. He politely and routinely takes out a paper map and explains to us that we have to leave the Catholic one, cross the street and there we will come across a civilian cemetery. He gives us a map, repeats that the dog must be tied up and quietly, just as he appeared, disappears among the monuments. "Civilians" share the fate of suicides who were buried outside the cemetery for centuries. Excommunication (lat. exclusion from the community) did not imply the exclusion of unbelievers from the community only during life but also after death. Times have changed and this is no longer the practice, but the so-called "Catholic" and "civilian" cemeteries are still physically separated.

We follow the instructions we received and after ten minutes we leave the cemetery, cross the street and enter the civilian cemetery. From the entrance itself, the first thing that catches my eye is the portrait of Marx on the wall opposite the entrance, next to which the purple color dominates, the dominant color of the flag of the Spanish Republic. Just a few meters from the entrance, in a fenced area, we come across the grave of Dolores Ibaruri "La Pasionarie". On a large white stone slab in the lower right corner, clearly, in black letters, it says "DOLORES IBARRURI, PASIONARIA, 1895 - 1989". I remember from the media how her tombstone was repeatedly the subject of folklore right-wing desecration of left-wing symbols. In the fenced area there is another, much smaller, tombstone of the poet Marcos Anna. In addition to the fact that they were buried in the same fenced area, it draws my attention that his tombstone addresses Pasionara's with an engraved text: "Thank you Dolores and may your example follow us forever". I don't know where the posthumous closeness between these two communists came from. During their lifetime, they were united by activism in the Communist Party of Spain, as far as I know, closeness to Belgrade and Yugoslavia, but nothing more than that. After Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union repaired their relations, Passionaria visited Tito in Yugoslavia countless times. She also vacationed in Yugoslavia with her family. Markos Ana, on the other hand, maintained close relations with the Yugoslav interbrigadists. He was in Belgrade after Franco's death in 1976, when he participated in the "Spain Week" debate, dedicated to post-Franco Spain, which was held in the Student Cultural Center. In 2016, the Association of Spanish Fighters tried to bring the then ninety-six-year-old Marcos Ana to Belgrade for its annual meeting held in October. Due to his health, he refused, but sent a video message in which he addressed the members of the association. He died the following month. I am not familiar with his work, but I like the impression and emotion of the song Tell me what the tree looks like. of this former prisoner who spent more than 20 years in Franco's prisons, which I once read somewhere, remained engraved in my memory "...The light of the lock and the song of my rose/ 22 years, I already forget/ the dimensions of things/ their smell, aroma./ I sense the sea,/ fields, forests./ I say forests,/ and I forgot the geometry of the tree./ I speak to say/ that the years have forgotten me./ I have to stop/ I hear the steps of the guard".

Other important names of Spanish history and politics are buried in the civil cemetery, such as Pablo Iglesias, founder of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), one of the most influential Spanish political parties today, Francisco Pi i Margallo, Prime Minister of the First Spanish Republic.

We poorly organized our walking route, so now, in order to get to the monument to the Blue Divisions, we have to go back the way we came. This monument is located at the very entrance to the Catholic cemetery, in the place where the Spanish were buried mainstream of the second half of the 20th century, is dedicated to the Spaniards who fought and died on Hitler's side from 1941 to 1943, mostly on the Eastern Front. About forty-seven thousand of them volunteered to provide support to the Wehrmacht army due to ideological closeness but also the sense of debt that the Franco regime showed to Hitler's Germany for the help it received during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). The aesthetically typical monument of Francoist Spain, which combines the elements of monumentality, Catholicism and national unity, was also the target of various, in this case, ultra-leftist and anarchist movements that repeatedly damaged it. It is also today a gathering place for various devotees of Spain's fascist past who visit it on, for them, important dates. The profile of the famous German helmet draws attention, carved into the monument above the Catholic cross steel helmet, which was also used by members of the Blue Division. A metal Spanish flag from the so-called "flying" over the monument. of the pre-constitutional period (1978), with the eagle of St. John, the official flag from the time of Francoism. There is no shortage of flowers laid around the monument. The participation of Spanish volunteers on the side of Hitler's army in the Soviet Union was one of the main arguments of the Allies for the international isolation of Spain after the Second World War. Franco argued unconvincingly that the point of the Blue Divisions was actually his contribution to the fight against communism, not aid to Hitler.

This necropolis also has its own mayor. Enrique Tierno Galván was buried right there, higher up, on a slightly elevated place, with no other graves in the immediate vicinity, so that it would be clear to everyone that he was not just another mayor, but a man who entrusted his hometown with something very important. He was the mayor of Madrid from 1979 to 1986, a period of great growth in post-Franco Spain. Just as backward times need culprits, so forward ones need deserving citizens. As if the historical processes would not have taken place without those individuals. Would you? Thus, this socialist mayor was remembered by a large number of Spaniards as the man whose reforms made Madrid in just a few years a capital that could once again stand side by side with the most important European capitals, a status it had lost over the course of four decades.

photo: m. fernandez

We are hungry. Walking is starting to take its toll. My gaze passes over the tops of cypresses that abound in Mediterranean cemeteries and falls on the monument to the bullfighter known as "El Jijo" ("El Yiyo"). This contemporary gladiator, immortalized in bronze, with a dove standing on his right hand, was killed by a bull in 1985 at a bullfight in a neighborhood of Madrid, cutting his heart in half. He was 21 years old.

I do not understand at all those who celebrate the death of the bullfighter. But I don't particularly understand them if they eat a burger afterwards. On the other hand, I belong to a generation that grew up developing a much closer relationship with pets than was the case with older generations. Probably, unconsciously, the Hollywood productions that we grew up with and in which animals are the main characters played their role in experiencing animals as beings similar to us. Therefore, those who jump excitedly while the matador stabs an exhausted animal with a saber, whose mouth is already dripping with blood, are strangers to me. The DNA of ancient games, whose essence consists of struggle and sacrifice, is woven into this pastime, which by some miracle has survived to the present day. Today, there is a lot of pressure from organizations for the protection of animal rights to abolish bullfighting. They will probably succeed sooner or later, since the younger generations of Spaniards are less and less interested in bullfighting. The burgers, however, will still be consumed after that.