Civil War prisoners who survived on seaweed and drew piglets.
El País has published a feature on the exhibition “The Prisoners of the Monastery. Memories of the Spanish Civil War”, highlighting the extraordinary story behind the collection.
The article recounts how thousands of prisoners under Franco’s regime were held during the Spanish Civil War in the deteriorating Cistercian Monastery of Oia (Pontevedra), the only Cistercian monastery located on the Atlantic coast. In 1937, the Nationalist General Inspectorate of Concentration Camps converted the monastery into a temporary classification prison to cope with the growing number of men captured at the front.
While awaiting transfer to a permanent prison, release or execution, the prisoners struggled to survive within the monastery’s 800-year-old walls. Their daily rations consisted of little more than dark water and a dried or boiled chestnut. To ease their hunger, many collected and ate seaweed, crabs and limpets from the shore when they were taken to the sea before dawn to wash. According to the Civil Registry, at least 25 prisoners died at the Monastery from starvation, dysentery, epidemic typhus and illnesses aggravated by severe malnutrition.
Read the full article in El País:
https://elpais.com/espana/2020-10-17/los-presos-de-la-guerra-civil-que-comian-algas-y-dibujaban-cochinillos.html
