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The memorial is the process :
Les Corts women ’ s prison
Ricard Conesa Sánchez Historian , project officer EUROM
On 14 December 2019 , the monument dedicated to the now defunct women ’ s prison in the Barcelona neighbourhood of Les Corts was inaugurated . However , the monument does not claim to be “ the memorial ”. Instead , the memorial is everything that surrounds it . It is the place and the connection it has established with those who gather there on a regular basis to engage in a myriad of activities , as Jordi Guixé explains at the beginning of this book , the memorial is the process , and this process has been underway for some time now .
Fernando Hernández Holgado , historian at the Complutense University of Madrid ( UCM ), specialist in the field of women ’ s prisons under the Franco dictatorship , contributes a key chapter to the book , a chapter on the history of Les Corts women ’ s prison . From the prison ’ s predecessor ( the Amalia Prison ) to its closure in 1955 , its demolition and the construction of a large shopping centre that opened in 1974 on the site of the former prison . The republican penitentiary reform , like so many others , was cut short by General Franco ’ s failed coup d ’ état and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 , the same year that the prison first opened . Its beginnings were marked by the conflict in the Republican rearguard , with political prisoners of all kinds , from collaborators with the rebel side to anti-fascist victims of reprisals ( anarchists and Trotskyists ). Nevertheless , the situation would bear no comparison to the inhumane conditions that would be endured once Franco ’ s troops entered the city in 1939 – although the building was originally intended to accommodate around one hundred inmates , the peak of its occupancy was reached in August that same year , when it held 1,806 women and 43 children . Hernández painstakingly documents the type of prisoners incarcerated ( political , common , foreign , those who were shot or died of illness ), the cruel governance of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul , and the incidents involving the prisoners ’ resistance and self-organisation , as well as their escape attempts .
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Observing Memories Issue 7