Spain marked 90 years on August 7, 2026, since the 1936 destruction of the Sacred Heart of Jesus monument at Cerro de Los Angeles. The August 7 date coincided with the first Friday of the month, a key day for devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Cerro de Los Angeles sits in the municipality of Getafe near Madrid, at the geographic center of the Iberian peninsula. King Alfonso XIII consecrated Spain to the Sacred Heart of Jesus at the site on May 30, 1919, during a solemn state ceremony before a 24-meter monument that received broad popular support.
In 1924, Santa Maravillas de Jesus initiated the construction of a Discalced Carmelite convent next to the site. The nuns survived being forced out of cloister during the conflict because the mayor of Getafe protected them.
Civil War Violence and Demolition
The Spanish Civil War broke out on July 18, 1936. Writer Jorge Fernandez Diaz stated that the Popular Front government took office in February 1936 through documented electoral fraud and displayed radical hatred toward the Catholic Church.
Socialist, communist, and anarchist militiamen killed five young Catholics who stayed overnight to guard the monument. On July 28, 1936, a firing squad of militiamen was photographed shooting the Sacred Heart of Jesus statue, producing an image that circulated around the world.
Demolition crews destroyed the entire monument on August 7, 1936. The destruction wiped out the altar at the base and two sculpture groups on the right and left sides that represented the triumphant Church and the militant Church.
Persecution and Post-War Rebuilding
Fernandez Diaz described the act as a precursor to religious persecution by the Republican side that created thousands of religious and lay martyrs among men, women, youth, and adults. He noted that the campaign exceeded early Christian persecutions under Nero and Diocletian, the 1926 to 1929 Cristero War in Mexico, and Soviet actions against Orthodox Christians during the Bolshevik revolution.
A new monumental complex was built on Cerro de Los Angeles after the war and was consecrated in 1965. Faithful renewed the consecration in 1969 for the 50th anniversary of the 1919 royal event.
Large crowds of believers renewed the consecration again during major gatherings in 2009 for the 90th anniversary and in 2019 for the centenary. Fernandez Diaz framed these historic memory events as acts of true reconciliation.
