Some Catholics in Spain are asking the Catholic Church to save a religious site in Madrid from threats of alteration and decommissioning by the Spanish government, which claims the site honors a former fascist dictator. Critics claim the government is opposed to the site because it is religious, noting that officials have already removed 35 public crosses throughout the country under a law that allows them to remove public monuments associated with the dictator. The Spanish government, in cooperation with the Holy See, the central government of the Catholic Church, has begun the process of resignification for the Valley of the Fallen, a more than 3000-acre complex dedicated to the fallen from both sides of the Spanish Civil War. The process of resignification involves redefining the meaning of a historic site in order to adapt it to a new purpose. The Spanish Civil War was a conflict from 1936-1939 between the Nationalists, led by fascist leader Francisco Franco, and the Republican faction. Thousands of Catholics were martyred by the Republican faction during the war. The bodies of more than 30,000 victims of the war from both sides are buried at the Valley of the Fallen, according to the Catholic News Agency. The site was built on Franco’s orders, and the former dictator was buried in the complex until 2019, when his body was exhumed and moved. The site is also home to a Benedictine abbey, a boys’ Catholic Gregorian choir school, and a basilica situated underground in an excavated space in the mountain. A 492-foot cross, the largest in the world, towers above the complex. The Spanish government reached an agreement with the church in February to force out the Rev. Santiago Cantera, the Catholic former prior of the Benedictine community there, whom the government called a “Francoist.” It now seeks to alter the site to align with the 2022 Law of Democratic Memory, which aims to condemn the wrongs of the Francoist regime. One government minister, Félix Bolaños, told the Spanish news site El Diario that the government and the church are going to work hand in hand to give new meaning to the monument, “which was to the dictator [Franco] and now it will be to democracy, to Europe, to reconciliation, and to memory.” The cross, worship in the basilica, and the Benedictine community will be maintained, Bolaños said. An initial proposal from the government called for the church to divest the Basilica of its sacred character, to force out the Benedictines, and to destroy the cross, according to a statement by Archbishop of Valladolid Rev. Luis Garcia. Some modification to the basilica has been agreed upon, according to a statement by Archbishop of Madrid Cardinal José Cobo, but the church will no longer be divested of its sacred character. The extent of the changes remains unclear. Member of the European Parliament and the Spanish Vox Party Hermann Tertsch told The Daily Signal he opposes the resignification of the site because it is not a monument of Francoist victory but a monument of reconciliation. According to Tertsch, the process of resignification, once begun, will not ultimately spare the cross or the religious community at the monument. “Although the church says the monks have to stay, everyone from the government is sure the monks will not be there for too long,” he told The Daily Signal. Victor Gonzáles, a former member of the Spanish Parliament, said the government will eventually try to accomplish its original three goals of removing the monks, desacralizing the basilica, and demolishing the cross. Christians around the world must defend the cross and the tradition of the monastic community, he said. “We have to stop the desacralization of Europe,” Gonzáles told The Daily Signal. Gonzáles, who sent two of his sons to the boys’ choir school at the site, traveled to Washington, D.C., in April to ask elected Christians in America to oppose the destruction of the Valley of the Fallen. The Spanish government sees the towering cross and the monument as a provocation, Tertsch said, because its wants to oppose everything that has to do with religion. The Spanish government has already removed 35 public crosses under the Law of Democratic Memory, according to conservative Spanish newspaper La Gaceta. “It would be a shame if the international church allowed this cross to fall,” Tertsch said.