Built by political prisoners in the 1940s, Carabanchel prison became a symbol of Franco’s repression. This is where all the political prisoners of Spain to be judged in Madrid. Luis Suárez-Carreño He was one of them and now he tells how special this prison was, since “generations of young people were forged both by resisting repression and by developing forms of solidarity.”
Nati Camacho also finished there twice, pregnant, for belonging to Workers’ Commissions. They put her in an area dedicated to pregnant women or those who lived with their children already born in prison: “We went out to the patio for an hour,” she remembers, “and that was the only hour of natural light we saw.”
Thousands of prisoners, some illustrious like Marcelino Camacho and Miguel Ríoswere locked up in a place denounced for the lack of decent conditions that led to its closure in 1998. It is “an example of what a penitentiary center should not be in a democracy,” as stated by Luis Antonio Ruiz Casero, a doctor in History from the Complutense University, author of the first monograph on the Carabanchel prison and memory recovery center booster.
When it closed, the prison organized guided tours and, while on the street the neighbors demanded that facilities be built there for the neighborhood, the building deteriorated irreparably, it was filled with dirt, debris, graffiti and people who had no other place to sleep. .
In 2008, the then Minister of the Interior, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcabaand the former mayor of Madrid, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, signed for its total demolition against the will of the neighbors and the Higher Center for Scientific Research, which recommended building a center for memory: today it will be impossible to recover many documents, left to their fate there after the closure. 650 apartments, a hospital, green areas and state offices were promised; “a space for the future,” said Ruiz-Gallardón.
Well, your future today, 15 years later, it is a plot of land in the middle of Carabanchel. Absolute oblivion where memory should have been.
Source: Lasexta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
