Unspoken Map References. Sites of Francoist Repression.

In this exhibition, Ana Teresa Ortega presents the results of a study in which the skill and artistic power that characterise her work are combined with painstaking archive research in search of photographic evidence of places and buildings that for decades were used as sites of repression and imprisonment by the Franco regime. At the same time, that research and this exhibition, highlight the power of photographic images as documents.

In her exhibition Ms Ortega presents to us a past that is still present, a memory that refuses to fade, painful absences that have left indelible marks not only in memory but also on the scenarios of the events that caused them.

These tranquil spots, depicted now 70 years later, were once the site of Francoist concentration camps. They are quiet places that do not look as if they are hiding any terrible secrets. And perhaps they are not: the horrors that took place there occurred in plain view, in broad daylight, over a period of days, weeks, months and even years. We are not dealing with the sudden appearance of some monstrous evil in the dead of night, but with the gradual application of a systematic plan for administering life and death.

These camps began to spring up in the autumn of 1936, as it became clear that what had started out as a coup d’état had turned irremediably into a civil war.
They came in many forms, and thousands of people passed through their gates. There were evacuation camps, lazarets, sorting camps, camps for prisoners classed as being of ‘doubtful loyalty’ or as ‘dissidents not guilty of criminal homicide’, camps for foreign prisoners, camps for invalids; plans were even made for a camp for children. It is also said that some should be considered as death camps.

None of this is secret: records of the events at these places are conserved in painstaking detail in thousands of administrative documents that lie bundled in archives and warehouses awaiting classification.

There too there is silence.