Redemption of sentences through labour

During the Civil War, Franco began to consider creating a system to make productive use of the hundreds of thousands of political prisoners who were falling into his hands. In March 1938, the dictator asked for help from the Primate Cardinal of Spain, Isidro Gomá. He gladly agreed and, with the approval of the Vatican, mobilized the Church’s human and theological resources. In addition to several Catholic activists employed by the regime—such as the Minister of Justice, the Count of Rodezno, and the Director General of Prisons, Máximo Cuervo, the key figure in carrying out the project would be the Jesuit José Agustín Pérez del Pulgar, who was appointed director of the Board for the Redemption of Sentences through Labor, created on 7 October1938.

The ideology of the Board was based on religious concepts of punishment and the necessary expiation for the alleged crimes and damages committed by the Republicans in their supposed “rebellion,” in order to attain redemption and the forgiveness of sins. By working, political prisoners deemed redeemable (the unrepentant were excluded from the program) would pay for their guilt and, at the same time, come to accept the goodness and justice of the regime that is, they would renounce their past errors. Franco made it very clear that granting amnesties would be a mistake and a liberal-type crime, an opinion shared by Father Pérez del Pulgar in his book The Solution Spain Gives to the Problem of Its Political Prisoners, published in January 1939, which is shown here.

The main incentive offered to prisoners was that one day would be deducted from their sentence for every two days they worked. They would also be paid for their work. However, the wages they received were very low. In the postwar period, a free labourer earned around ten pesetas a day, but prisoners in the program were theoretically paid two, of which three quarters were withheld by the company for maintenance costs. In other words, single prisoners effectively received only fifty cents. The official wage for married prisoners was four pesetas a day, plus one more for each child under fifteen.

While prisoners, who numbered around 45,000 by the end of 1943, received starvation wages, the companies employing them made enormous profits from their labour. Among the companies specializing in public works that benefited the most were Banús, Dragados, Duro Felguera, Marroquín, Molán, and San Román. These firms carried out some of the most important engineering projects of the early years of the dictatorship, from rebuilding the war-damaged railways to constructing the Valley of the Fallen, as well as Lower Guadalquivir Canal in Seville, popularly known as the “Canal of the Prisoners”.