Arqueología de los destacamentos penales franquistas en el ferrocarril Madrid-Burgos: El caso de Bustarviejo

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explore from an archaeological point of view one of the technologies of repression employed by the Franco regime after the Spanish Civil War: the forced labor camps (destacamentos penales). More specifically we will study the destacamentos established along the Madrid-Burgos railway under construction between 1941 and 1957. In these places of confinement, political and common prisoners redeemed their sentence building the railway. During our research in the Madrid region, we have discovered the remains of several camps and we have begun the archaeological study of one of them, Bustarviejo. Although historical research on Francoist repression after the war has increased during the last decade, the physical spaces where that repression took place have been overlooked. In this work, we will try to show the usefulness of combining archaeology and conventional historiography in order to better understand a technology of punishment of the 20th century.