The people who got there were amazed. After crossing the whole of Spain in petty train carriages, between steep mountains and the sea, they faced a series of mansions that did not look like prisons. But the adjacent civil guard, the soldier, and the large, sturdy portals reminded them that they had been taken to a strange place where they had been punished. They were in Saturrarán (Mutriku, Guipúzcoa), a special prison expressly set up for them.

At that time the prisons of the Francoists were already known to them, whether they were the prisons of the towns or the prisons of the province. They were also known, of course, for the famous Las Ventas in Madrid. The latter was the most important in the women’s prison network. The construction of Las Ventas was driven by leftist Prison Director Victoria Kent, driven by innovative pre-war pretensions. Although it was built with the Republic, it soon became one of the main axes of Franco’s criminal policy and repressive chain. In fact, in the small place, which had been prepared for 500 prisoners, in 1939 11,000 women were held captive, crowded into its cells and rooms. Most of them were without sentences, but when they received the final verdict, they began a journey that would take them to the other prisons of the State; from Las Ventas in Madrid they sent Aunitz women prisoners to Mallorca, Malaga, Durango, Zornotza and Saturrarán. The first two were ordinary prisons, like Las Ventas, but the ones in the Basque Country were, in the past, convents, schools and seminaries.

The reason for this eccentric evolution is obvious: the victory of the Francoists increased the number of prisoners in a geometric proportion and as a result, as soon as the military campaigns ended, the need for new prisons became apparent. In fact, the traditional prisons and concentration camps or the workers’ battalions were not enough to hold a large number of captives. For this reason, the rooms of the convents and schools were adapted, with cells, irons and guards, with the intention of applying repression. The Durango, for example, was a convent of French nuns before the beginning of the war, but as a result of the fighting it became empty and was used as a prison by the Francoists until the local seroros managed to proclaim and recover what belonged to them.

Surrounded by the sea cliffs

In Saturrarán, on this plot by the sea in Mutriku, there were two old hotels –Astigarraga and Saturrarán– and the house that had been a seminary. The Francoists took over the three buildings and turned them into women’s prisons, a vile function that they held until 1944. The first prisoners were transferred to the new prison in January 1938 from the Ondarreta prison in San Sebastián. A little later, more prisoners arrived: From Galicia, Bizkaia, Cantabria and especially Asturias, these last “guests” were the majority in number.

When the Northern Front sank, the Francoists received an abundant harvest of captives and from there the number steadily increased. To the large groups of initial prisoners were added those captured in Andalusia and Castile since 1939. As a result, the women ' s prison in Saturraran became increasingly important in the prison structure. In 1940, there were more than 1,500 inmates and three years later, although this number fell by a third, the prison with the largest concentration of women was in Saturrarango with 1,050 inmates, with 400 inmates in Madrid and 200 in Malaga, respectively. In the same way they prepared dwellings in Saturraran to

house both women and their children. The smallest construction was the barracks for civil guards and soldiers, and the other two were prison cells.Within this area, surrounded by the sea cliff, the prisoners were separated in the six pavilions. In one, in the old Hotel Astigarraga, there were mothers and their children. Most of them were newborns or very young children; according to the legislation in force in 1940, children could stay with their mother until the age of 3. In the rest of the pavilions there were women prisoners without children. It happened legally in the galleries of the great prisons, also in Saturrarán, they were forbidden to pass from one pavilion to another, and they were allowed to do so only at the feast of the warden of the prisons, the feast of the Mercy or the feast of Korpusti.

116 women and 56 children killed

The living conditions, of course, had nothing to do with the old hotel or the former seminary. During the first months after the opening of the prison, the prisoners had to sleep without beds on wooden floors. In the halls of the pavilions they arranged a narrow space of 45 centimeters wide to place their finger. Just like for lunch: since there was no table or dining room, they bought food on the metal plate and ate the ranch sitting on the ground in absolute silence. On the other hand, the food was very scarce and had to be repaired by relatives and friends of the neighboring villages with what they had sent. All the testimonies agree that they had gone through a terrible hunger and that in order to combat it, external solidarity was not enough. In addition, the laymen who cared for the prisoners, took the food sent from abroad and put it on sale in the prison’s economy, such as the fish provided for the prisoners by the fishermen of Ondarroa.

The diseases also hit this strange hotel very hard. The Books of the Dead in Mutriku tell in detail that 116 women died between the walls of Saturraran between 1938 and 1944. As there were so many dead, those responsible planned to create the cemetery, but the intention did not advance and they continued with the eternal system; that is, taking the dead in the car to the Mutriku Cemetery. The most deadly diseases were tuberculosis and bronchopneumonia, but many other ailments – problems with digestion, typhus, nephritics... – also hit the inmates very harshly. In the books of the dead it is clear that many children died in those years, 56 children, to be exact. It's as sad as it is strange to hear about them just because they died. In fact, as if they were in limbo, they did not report them in prison documents and only wrote their names in the ecclesiastical books of Mutriku when they died. According to the source, many of them died of rickets or bronchopneumonia. This flow of children died in 1944, when most of the children were suddenly and without any notification transferred to hospices managed by the Spanish State. Since then, another tragedy began, once the child was separated from his mother, who had a very difficult time recovering his son or daughter.

More places to stay in Arantzazu Velez de Mendizabal: “The White Panther”

The managers and rulers of all these miseries were not the guards of the traditional prisons, but some of the lackeys. The II. With the Republic, the section of prison chaplains was dismantled and the seroras in women’s prisons were also expelled. But, of course, the Francoists restored this “service”. All kinds of nuns returned to women’s prisons to take care of the detainees. In Amorebieta, for example, the sisters of Saint Joseph acted, and in Pamplona, the sisters of the Charity of Saint Vincent. In Saturraran, although the exterior of the buildings was guarded by about 50 soldiers, the entire internal regime was taken care of by 25 Mermaid legislators. In each of the pavilions there were 4 seros and all were led by Arantzazu Vélez de Mendizabal. Vélez de Mendizabal was a direct assistant to the directors Manuel Sanz and Antonio Maya, and was basically the boss in front of all the prisoners. This serora, which was called the “white panther”, gained a very bad reputation; in addition to being a symbol of repression and authority, it always showed a very aggressive tendency towards the prisoners: Because he was said to be the “representative of God,” the prisoners were forced to raise their hands in front of him as they shouted, “Get to Spain!” It seems that the behavior of ordinary prisoners, especially “lost women” – of subjugating them through harsh discipline – was also intended to be imposed on political prisoners. But with the women of Saturrarán, this attitude did not help, even if they were repeatedly subjected to sanctions – mainly to enter isolation cells. In the first months, the prisoners and the sereros faced fierce competition, until the first obtained the approval of their political status. Since then, the impositions made using the blind nationalism of praying the Rosary, participating in Masses, missions and catechesis have been relegated. If anyone wanted to participate in such actions, he would have done so, but not because the seroras were in charge, so each one kept his own places and ideas. In this particular context, curiously, José María LLepas left very good memories of the local whims among the prisoners who had been there. LLepas was the driving force behind many of the aid they received from the surrounding villages and showed a humane attitude towards the incarcerated.

Exemplary in educational activities

However, the women who were there could not do much more than to maintain their ideological identity. As they confess, they barely had any political action. Although they were from all walks of life – communists, socialists, Basque nationalists – the need to survive was the only yoke of connection and solidarity between them. As in the other prisons, there were no strong political debates, internal magazines or notable political initiatives. Those who were present said that they had little political information and remembered with regret – and irony – that the bells of Ondarro, which were heard from the prison, told them about the progress of the Francoists. Every time they acquired an important city, the bells were beaten and smoked. Then they made the Te Deum, which confirmed this indirect information, to thank the victory of the nationals.At the end of these celebrations they knew that they had lost the war and that from then on in Saturrara would be for a long time the centre of suffering for many women.

In order to settle the pain, the prisoners organized a series of actions, with great success. Apart from the workshops that used to be traditional yeasts, such as medals, sewing, embroidery, etc., literacy and cultural activities were carried out with the help of prison teachers. Thanks to these women prisoners, the Saturrarango was an example in this area. But in no way from the perspective of the magazine Redención, which glorified the Spanish prisons with arrogance, like the prisons of the Mothers of Saturrarán and San Isidro, but for the effort made by the prisoners themselves. Since it was impossible to speak aloud about the real situation in the Saturrarán prison, after the transfer of the children, the Francoists decided to close the prison itself. Several of the prisoners in Saturrarán were taken there when the Zornotzal was restructured and the rest were dispersed in state prisons. That was in 1944 and by then the number of prisoners had dropped considerably.As we know, since 1943 II. Forced by the course of the World War, the Francoists slowed down their repressive behavior. Through the pardons, the number of prisoners – especially women – decreased considerably.

Some of those freed remained around Saturraran – in Eibar, Ondarro or Mutriku – to work in solidarity for the friends who remained inside. They knew that the end of the dictatorship was far from over, but they also knew that, even with the loss of the war, their lives in the prisons indicated that they were not mistaken, that Franco’s disastrous prison network also reinforced their reason, their opportunity and their political action.