Prisons in Transition? The Prison System During and After the Political Transition from the Francoist Dictatorship

Abstract

This article explores the chronology of change in the Spanish prison system, especially during the transition from the Francoist dictatorship (1975–1982). It indicates how the incarcerated population had come to reflect Francoism's management of social change (including via an increasing use of preventive detention). By the early 1970s, political activists represented a minority of those incarcerated, although a minority that had grown steadily again from the late 1960s. The article discusses relations between the different groups of inmate, the rapidly-deteriorating conditions inside the gaols, and the emergence in the early transition period (1976) of prison protests (COPEL) led by common prisoners whose main objective was inclusion in the gaol amnesty then being proposed as part of the exit strategy from dictatorship. The article analyzes the reactive rather than proactive response to COPEL of Spain's transitional governments, composed of reformist Francoists, and the eventual outcome in a prison reform law in 1979. The article assesses the law's limited practical effect inside the gaols, because of severe budgetary restrictions combined with Spain's rising prison population – the latter mirroring developments across Western democracies generally.