Drawing of the Ogern Labour Camp

Within Catalonia there were people belonging to political organizations and trade unions who sought to take advantage of the outbreak of the Civil War and the Generalitat’s loss of control of law and order to change society. This required destroying private property, eliminating religion, and burning notarial and judicial archives and buildings like churches and monasteries that represented power.

They also believed it was essential to physically eliminate people who they considerd class, ideological or religious enemies. Many people in the Republican rearguard, both men and women, were murdered and buried in what were called “clandestine cemeteries” or were tried by so-called “People’s Tribunals”. These were courts that were set up outside the official legal system, staffed mainly by lower-class people who had no knowledge of the law, and which handed down very harsh sentences. The peak of this violence beyond the control of the authorities came between July and December 1936.

After the government of the Republic assumed control of public order from the Generalitat and took over its Department of Defence in May 1937, this type of violence was significantly reduced. Those considered counter-revolutionaries continued to be persecuted, but now they were judged and sentenced according to the laws of the Republic.

On 26 December 1936, Joan García Oliver, a member of the CNT-FAI who was serving as Minister of Justice in the government of the Republic, ordered the creation of what were called “Labour Camps” to house people sentenced by military or revolutionary courts to terms longer than six months and one day. The first of these camps was established in Totana (Murcia). Six were set up in Catalonia during the spring of 1938, all run by the Military Investigation Service (SIM), the Republic’s intelligence and security agency.

At the same time, the Generalitat created a Special Court with three judges to investigate and persecute the violence in Catalonia during the first months of the war.  By the end of 1938, many people accused of being involved in those crimes had been arrested and more than 2,000 bodies had been exhumed from cemeteries across Catalonia.