Mausoleo a los soldados italianos in the province of Burgos

The Mausoleo a los soldados italianos, located in the province of Burgos, was completed in 1939 to house the remains of Italian soldiers who fell in the port of Escudo during the summer of 1937. The idea for the mausoleum came from an architect who proposed collecting the remains of the Italian Corpo Truppe Volontarie (CTV) in a commemorative building. The project was received well by the Italian Ministry and the regime in Spain, which approved the construction of numerous monuments dedicated to the memory of these soldiers.

Friar Pietro Bergamini di Varza directed the construction of the mausoleum. The two architects completed the work in 1939, creating a monumental mark of Italian intervention in the regional landscape. Galeazzo Ciano, the Italian Minister, supervised the burial of the soldiers. In 1971, an Italian military bus carrying approximately 50 former combatants and relatives crashed at the port of Escudo, causing 12 deaths and 23 injuries. This location has been known as the curva de los italianos since that incident.

In 1975, the Italian government decided to exhume the bodies - 268 were repatriated in zinc boxes and the rest were moved to the church of San Antonio de Padua in Zaragoza. The mausoleum has been abandoned since then and suffers from deterioration and vandalism. Before 2023, its old political symbols were removed. The monument measures 10 meters in height and is made of concrete covered with limestone slabs. The base is square with four slanted triangular planes - two stepped and two smooth - and its sides do not meet at a vertex but at a small platform where a statue was originally planned but never executed.

The entrance to the monument is framed by a giant capital M, which some interpret as a reference to Mussolini, while others believe it reflects its mortuary function as a place of rest for the remains of the Italian soldiers. Access to the pantheon is through a wrought iron gate with geometric motifs, closed with frosted glass decorated with references to war and nature. In its interior, a circular chapel covered by a semi-sphere with a lantern allows natural light to enter through cross-shaped openings.

The circular space functions as a columbarium with 360 niches for the ashes of Italian soldiers of the Corpo Truppe Volontarie, which cover the entire surface of the cylinder wall. An iron staircase leads to the subterranean crypt created to bury 12 fallen officers. The structure is characterized by its austerity and functionality, devoid of ornamentation. In the entrance, the phrase 'Presente' is repeated three times in memory of the fallen soldiers. On the south side, there is an epigraph that plays with the word 'escudo', making allusions to the place of the conflict and a Bible verse.

The style of the mausoleum presents eclectic features, with clear influences from the avant-garde. The work can be defined as brutalist, a style appreciated in Italy for its solidity, simple lines, and austere materials. The rigid, geometric shapes follow the trend of rationalist architecture, combining sobriety with the monumentality of the work. On February 29, 2024, the mausoleum was declared a cultural heritage monument by the Junta de Castilla y León, a decision supported by the Italian party Fratelli d'Italia.",

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons