ABSTRACT
The huge prison population built up in the Pozoblanco area after the Civil War drew to a close speaks to the power of the policing services that the Francoist state had built up during the confl ict. For the new authorities wasted little time in setting up concentration camps along the lines of those dotted across other parts of Spain already occupied by Francoists. Accordingly in the nearby towns of Los Blázquez, Valsequillo, Cerro Muriano and La Granjuela camps soon sprang up for those prisoners whom the occupiers considered to be political small fry. La Granjuela alone came to house up to 20,000 such prisoners. Meanwhile the victors sent those they thought to be among the local political top brass to the area’s main prison in Pozoblanco.4 This penitentiary soon fi lled to overfl owing, and in haste the new authorities pressed a whole series of buildings across the partido into service as makeshift prisons. With so many rounded up, houses, schools and town halls all found themselves fi lled to the gunnels with prisoners.5
