In the Bricia moor, in the north of the province of Burgos and a few kilometers from the border with Cantabria, remains a giant imperial eagle, crouching, made in 1940 in marble and concrete. Since then, he has been waiting for the moment to spread his wings and face his prey, the enemy. At the beginning of the year, it was proposed to protect this Franco monument – recognition of the collaboration of General Antonio Sagardía in the military coup against the Second Republic and a metaphor for the regime’s propaganda – to thus avoid its possible destruction. of the application of the law on Democratic Memory. However, the Junta de Castilla y León ultimately decided not to open the file for Asset of Cultural Interest (BIC) that it had approved last February for the so-called Pyramid of the Italians, a fascist monument located a few steps away from there. kilometers north of Águila de Sagardía.
Those who travel the austere landscape of Bricia say that the eagle is imposing, even frightening. But today, given the uncertain future represented by the absence of legal protection for this mass, this will be the case to a lesser extent. The Ministry of Culture of Castilla y León reports, in this regard, that it received in 2023 the request for protection from the Association for Reconciliation and Historical Truth, a group whose philosophy consists of “keeping intact the memory history of Spain, as well as the Spanish historical and artistic heritage”. However, the documentation provided “is not approved by any scientific institution” and “it is therefore not possible to assess the origin of this heritage property”.
The institution highlights this scientific endorsement as the key to the withdrawal of the file, in order to mark the distances with the declaration approved on February 29 in the Cortes of Castilla y León for the Pyramid of the Italians which, according to the ministry, did so. . In fact, the Minister of Culture, Gonzalo Santonja, then justified that this request came from an individual who had presented various articles of his authorship, published in organizations such as the Sautuola Institute of Cantabria, the Royal Catalan Academy of Fine Arts of San Jordi. and the Pablo Olavide University of Seville. Likewise, Santonja highlighted the “unique character” of the Fascist monument, which he attributed to being “the only one in Spain of this type of interwar architecture”, as a pillar of the case which was later resumed.
a step back
In any case, and despite the fact that the Minister of Culture of Castilla y León had announced then that the declaration of this type of property would be accepted “without doubt”, Gonzalo Santonja then confirmed the imminent treatment of “more of projects”, which would be examined “one for one”. Proposals which would be taken from a list prepared by his Vox colleagues at the time (the government coalition with the Popular Party, the first of its kind in the country, dissolved on July 11, but Santonja remained at the head of Culture), that she collected a set of 190 assets distributed in different provinces of this community, in order to circumvent the law on democratic memory approved by the central government. Of all, the one that appeared in the basins as the successor to the Pyramid was precisely the homage to the so-called column of Sagardía, whose protection was finally abandoned.
Indeed, it should be remembered that the refusal to open this file, beyond the specific reasons put forward by the government of Castilla y León, comes in the midst of distancing the Popular Party of Alfonso Fernández Mañueco from the postulates of Vox . The last episode of this ideological “divorce” took place on September 25, when the PP and the PSOE canceled the process of the future Concord Law that Mañueco himself had negotiated a few months ago with the far right. The only party that defended its endorsement at the time was Vox, with the failed intention of implementing a standard that avoided condemning the Franco regime and equated the victims of the civil war and those of the Franco regime with d Others murdered during the Second Republic. establishing a time slot between the years 1931 and 1978.
A place of exaltation of Francoism
For decades, and despite the fact that in recent years the Sagardía monument has been forgotten and vandalized, the Águila served as a meeting point for ex-combatants. Concretely, the Efe agency notes the concentration, in October 1962, of almost 3,000 former soldiers of the 62nd Division in the area of the municipality of Burgos, Cilleruelo de Bricia, in an act of memory of General Antonio Sagardía, who died in January. the same year, in the presence of his family. Meetings and celebrations which until now have been reduced and limited to a few solitary tributes.
If the Pyramid of the Italians was built in the middle of the civil war as a sort of funerary monument, to bury the bodies of the soldiers sent by Mussolini who died supporting Franco’s coup d’état, the case of the Eagle of Sagardía is somewhat different. . With the construction of this marble giant, dictator Franco wanted to reward the work of Antonio Sagardía Ramos at the head of the 62nd Division of the Navarre Army Corps. One of his most notable missions was to demolish the Northern Front, an 80 kilometer long line defended by the Republicans between the town of Revilla de Pomar in Palencia and the aforementioned municipality of Bricia de Burgos. The general of Zaragoza, already retired and residing in France during the Second Republic, returned to lead this attack and, once the Republican defense was defeated, he managed to enter Cantabria and arrived in Santander.
Despite a significant number of casualties, Sagardía achieved the set goal. Along the way, the general was noted for his severe repression against members of the Republican camp. To his credit, dozens of extrajudicial shootings, notably against the elderly, women and children. The Franco regime took note of the achievements of the so-called Sagardía column and took advantage of its military successes to use them as an additional argument in favor of the powerful propaganda machine of the dictatorship. This is how the commission for a monument was born, entrusted to the Basque architects Eduardo Olasagasti and José Antonio Olano. The project was carried out in 1940 by the construction company Altuna. Data, all of them, which are written on the surface.
Beyond the imperial eagle, made of marble and concrete, the monument includes a commemorative plaque. Its interior is solid, although there would be a hole in the belly of the bird in which the military documents of the Francoist general appear, an extreme that would only be confirmed if the monolith was finally demolished. On the exterior, the original inscriptions – among which stands out the popular Francoist slogan “Present!” » – mingle with a multitude of damage and graffiti, accentuating its perceptible state of abandonment. Today, the sudden shutdown of the Ministry of Culture of Castilla y León has only “clipped the wings” of a group that cherished its protection to escape the Democratic Memory Law.
