Spanish Legión Memorial

This memorial  to Spain's equivalent of the French Foreign Legion comemorates the dead of the Spanish  military unit currently  called La Legión and of all its predecessor  units which were known by different  names and had a variety  of recruitment policies with respect to Spanish  citizenship. The original  unit was established  in 1920 as the "Tercio de Extranjeros".

The memorial in Zaragoza is one of at least 3 on the Spanish mainland  and it stands in the Plaza de la Legión, a small area of  the Parque  de los Pinares de la Venicia alongside the Imperial Canal of Aragon. 

The memorial stands on a large stone plinth  adorned with numerous  insignia of constituent units and is surrounded by pine trees. Alongside the main sculptural memorial are bronze statues of rampant lions (symbol of the city) and a sculpture of a member of the Legión assisting a wounded comrade.

It is not clear why Zaragoza  should be the host city of such a memorial except  for the fact that when the unit was originally  established Zaragoza  was the location of its first recruiting office.

At various times Legión recruits have been either all Spanish  citizens (who joined the elite unit with an expressed desire to serve in overseas postings, usually  in colonial conflicts) or, at other times, a mixture of Spanish and non-Spanish citizens (in the early years from anywhere in the world). In recent  times the acceptance  of non-Spanish applicants was re-established when the Spanish draft was ended and the army  needed more recruits. This followed a period in which only Spaniards  were accepted which ended around 2000. Today non-Spanish recruits  to the Legión  are encouraged  but they must be native Spanish speaking citizens of former Spanish overseas territories and must, at the time of recruitment,  be legally resident in Spain. Over the years, unlike the French Foreign  Legion, Spanish  citizens have significantly outnumbered foreigners. Currently  both men and women  are  eligible to undergo the rigorous  selection  process. 

The current public view of the Legión remains a little  mixed because of its important  involvement in the Spanish Civil War on the side of Franco, who had once commanded  the unit and, just prior to that conflict,  the, brutal, 1934 suppression  of a miners' revolt in Asturias.  Some have suggested  that such memorials  contravene  Spain's Historic Memory Laws. In recent times the Legión has, to some extent, improved its public standing following  service in several recent overseas engagements that had public support  including service in the former Yugoslavia and several UN peacekeeping missions.

The history  of the Zaragoza memorial  is itself unclear  but whatever one's political stance there is no doubt that it is a striking military  memorial in a peaceful  setting.