One of the darkest secrets in Spain's recent past
As Franco's troops swept forward in 1936, the prisons began to fill with people whose only crime was loyalty to the constitutional government. Convents, factories and schools were turned into makeshift concentration camps. There were thousands of women among the prisoners. Some were members of left-wing parties, others just happened to have a husband or relative who supported the legitimate government. Many children were either thrown into the camps along with their mothers or were born in captivity. They were to spend their tender years in the brutal clutches of the regime.
Appalling conditions and starvation rations meant many children perished in the camps. They were often kept in the camps until their mothers were released or shot by firing squads. Getting children out often posed a cruel dilemma for mothers. When children had no one outside the camp to take care of them, they were sent to orphanages or religious institutions where they were systematically brainwashed to despise their parents' ideals and serve the New Order.
The whole policy of separating children from their parents was given a scientific gloss by the head of the Army Psychiatry Corps, Antonio Vallejo-Nájera. He got his inspiration for this novel "solution" by attending psychiatry congresses in Nazi Germany and experimenting on women prisoners in Málaga.
A year of intensive research went into the making of this documentary. Many of the scores of victims interviewed spoke of their ordeal for the first time. Spain, for all its much-vaunted new democracy, has swept the past under the carpet. This report puts the record straight, telling the ghastly story before Death and official neglect wipe away the evidence.
Appalling conditions and starvation rations meant many children perished in the camps. They were often kept in the camps until their mothers were released or shot by firing squads. Getting children out often posed a cruel dilemma for mothers. When children had no one outside the camp to take care of them, they were sent to orphanages or religious institutions where they were systematically brainwashed to despise their parents' ideals and serve the New Order.
The whole policy of separating children from their parents was given a scientific gloss by the head of the Army Psychiatry Corps, Antonio Vallejo-Nájera. He got his inspiration for this novel "solution" by attending psychiatry congresses in Nazi Germany and experimenting on women prisoners in Málaga.
A year of intensive research went into the making of this documentary. Many of the scores of victims interviewed spoke of their ordeal for the first time. Spain, for all its much-vaunted new democracy, has swept the past under the carpet. This report puts the record straight, telling the ghastly story before Death and official neglect wipe away the evidence.
