Bustarviejo (Madrid, Spain). A concentration camp used between 1944 and 1952. Political and common prisoners worked in the construction of the Madrid-Burgos railway.

Bustarviejo is one among the hundreds of concentration and labor camps established after the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) by General Franco's government. For over a decade, 500,000 people were the victims of this ruthless technology of repression. Many of these camps have disappeared forever. Many did not have substantial structures, just barbed wire and tents, which have left few archaeological traces. Others were old prisons, military barracks, hospitals, seminaries, factories or bullrings that reverted to their original use when the inmates were released or transferred to other detention centers. Bustarviejo's camp provides us with a unique opportunity to engage with a landscape of repression that has been remarkably well preserved. Prisoner barracks, sentry boxes, stalls, warehouses, shacks, washing places, tool sheds, powder magazines, quarries and the colossal railway embankment and tunnels built by the convicts: the whole operational sequence that disciplined the prisoners' minds and bodies.

We are now interviewing people who were related to the camp, looking for documentary evidence in archives, and exploring the surroundings in order to find similar sites.

Research team

• Álvaro Falquina Aparicio
• Pedro Fermín Maguire
• Carlos Marín Suárez
• Alicia Quintero Maqua
• Jorge Rolland Calvo

The camp was recently covered by Spain's main newspaper, El País