Spanish Civil War 1936–1939
Es Campament penal colony, La Savina (Formentera)
Repression & memory site
The story
After the war the Franco regime set up a penal colony for Republican prisoners on Formentera, beside the road from La Savina to La Mola. Some 2,133 men passed through it, many of them from mainland Spain and the Canaries. On 1 January 1942 it held 1,209 prisoners, on an island of about 3,000 inhabitants. At least 58 died of hunger and disease between 1941 and its closure in November 1942, and they were buried in Sant Francesc cemetery, where the Fòrum per la Memòria has exhumed remains. The site was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural in 2014, and the protection was upheld in court in 2018.
What you can see today
Low perimeter walls, barracks foundations, wells and a plaque with Joan Coromines' poem 'The Cemetery of the Living', beside the main road near the Estany des Peix.
Plan your visit
Seen from the PM-820 about 1 km out of La Savina port. Remains are fragmentary and luxury flats stand next to it, so stay on public land.
Sources
- mapcarta.com/La_Savina
- lavozdeibiza.com/actualidad/es-campament-del-unico-campo-de-concentracion-franquista-conservado-en-baleares-a-convivir-con-apartamentos-de-lujo/
- periodicodeibiza.es/pitiusas/formentera/2014/11/23/138589/campament-savina-trozo-historia-negra-espana.html
- escapadarural.com/blog/formentera-colonia-penitenciaria/
Nearby sites
- Campo de Los Almendros memorial, Alicante · 169 km
- Port of Alicante – Stanbrook and the last refugees · 171 km
- Mercado Central, Alicante (bombing of 25 May 1938) · 171 km
- Refugio de la Plaza Séneca, Alicante · 172 km
- Refugio antiaéreo del Ayuntamiento, Valencia · 175 km
- Palau de Benicarló (seat of the Republican government) · 175 km
All 158 sites in Spanish Civil War 1936–1939 →
The Spanish Civil War 1936–1939
A free field guide for your phone: the route, the maps and the stories built in, even with no signal. The battlefields, trenches, ruined villages, shelters, museums and memorials of the Spanish Civil War across the whole of Spain, told fairly from both sides.
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