Post Reply - Concentrationcamps are back !

During the Spanish Civil War and in the years following the conflict, around 192,000 prisoners were shot. During the period from 1939 to 1940, hundreds of prisoners were executed per day at their peak. ^[9] Several mass graves were discovered on the grounds of concentration camps. The laborious excavation and identification of the victims has now begun, including in Burgos. A total of 30,000 bodies are said to be lying in mass graves.

Section of the Canal de los presos built by forced labourers in Peñaflor (Seville)

In addition to ideological "re-education" measures, the prisoners were subjected to a brutal regime of forced labor and were organized into battalions for this purpose. The aim was not only to rebuild the infrastructure destroyed by the Spanish Civil War by building railway lines, dams and reservoirs, but also to demonstrate state power aimed at subjugating, humiliating and physically destroying political opponents by using forced labor to build prestige projects such as the Francoist memorial Valle de los Caídos .

A large number of prisoners were also used in the construction of the Canal del Bajo Guadalquivir from 1940 until its completion in 1962. In 2006, the section between La Rinconada and Dos Hermanas was given the name Canal de los Presos ("Canal of the Prisoners") in memory of the victims of the canal's construction .

The children of Republicans were often separated from their families and handed over to the care of the Catholic Church. Current research speaks of 30,000 such cases of politically motivated child abduction. ^[10]

ALBATERA’S concentration camp, discovered only in 2020, is to become an information and interpretation centre.

One of the derelict barrack buildings at the site will be rebuilt and used as the centre, for visitors to learn of the horrors that happened.

The main part of the camp, an enclave measuring only 500 square yards, reportedly kept 16,000 prisoners captive during six months of 1939, at the end of The Spanish Civil War.

They were Republican government officials, military staff, journalists, trade unionists and artists who were captured in the port of Alicante by Franco’s marauding fascist forces as they tried to escape Spain on the ship, Stanbrook.

Prisoners were believed to have been kept outside in the blistering Spanish sun, with hardly any food or drink.