A more intimate acquaintance with the inner life of the Spanish gaols has been accorded by a modern writer, Don Rafael Salillas. He summarises all its evils in the single word "money." All disorders and shortcomings, the corruption, the absence of discipline, the cruelties perpetrated, the prevailing license, the shameful immorality constantly winked at or openly permitted, have had one and the same origin, the use and misuse of the private funds the prisoners have at their disposal. Until quite a recent date, everything, even temporary liberty, had its price in Spanish prisons. This vicious system dated from the times when the "alcaide" or head of an establishment, the primary purpose of which was the safe custody of offenders, bought his place and was permitted to recoup himself as best he could out of his charges. The same abominable practice was at one time almost a world-wide practice, but nowhere has it flourished so largely as in Spain. No attempt was made to check it; it was acknowledged and practically deemed lawful.
In an ancient work on the prison of Seville, dating from the sixteenth century, the writer, Christobal de Chaves, classifies the interior under three heads; the spaces entered respectively by three doors of gold, silver or copper, each metal corresponding to the profits drawn from each. Imprisonment might be made more tolerable by payment regulated according to a fixed tariff. For a certain sum any prisoner might go home to sleep, he might purchase food where little, if any, was provided, he might escape fetters or purchase "easement of irons," as in the old English prisons. To enhance the value of the relief afforded worse hardships were inflicted at the outset. Restraint was made most irksome in the beginning of imprisonment. The fetters were then the heaviest and most varied, the deepest and vilest dungeons were the first quarters allotted. A plain hint of relaxation and alleviation was given, to be obtained at a price and the converse made equally certain. Increased pain and discomfort were the penalty for those who would not, or, worse still, who could not produce the extortionate sums demanded. Tasks imposed were rendered more difficult; it was a common practice to oil or grease the rope by which water was raised from a well, so that it should slip through the fingers and intensify the labour.
When authority had sold its good will or wrung the life blood from its victims they were handed over to the tender mercies of their fellow prisoners, the self-constituted masters and irresponsible tyrants in the place. The most brutal and overbearing ruled supreme within the walls and levied taxes by the right of the strongest. The "garnish" of the old British prisons, the enforced payments to gain a first footing, was exacted to the last in Spain from all new arrivals and was called "cobrar el patente," i. e. collecting the dues. To hesitate or refuse payment was promptly punished by cruel blows; the defaulters were flogged; they got the culebrazo (whipping) with a rope kept for the purpose. The quite penniless were despoiled of their clothing and consoled with the remark that it was better for them to take to their beds because they were naked, than on account of injuries and wounds, or they wrapped themselves up in some ragged cloak infested with fleas. The bullies or valientes were not interfered with by the authorities but rather supported by them. In fact they played into each other's hands. Both worked their wicked will upon their victims and in their own way,—the authorities by right of the legal powers they wielded, the master-prisoners by force of character and the strength of their muscles. Both squeezed out money like juice from a lemon, robbed, swindled or stole all that came in their way.
Guzman de Alfarache, the typical thief of the time of Philip II, whose life and adventures are told by the author of the most famous of the picaresque novels, describes his journey from Seville to Cadiz to embark upon one of the galleys which made up the naval power of Spain. "As we started on the road, we came upon a swine-herd with a number of young pigs, which we surrounded and captured, each of us taking one. The man howled to our commissary that he should make us restore them, but he turned a deaf ear and we stuck to our plunder. At the first halt we laid hands on other goods and concealed them inside one of the pigs when the commissary interposed, discovered the things and took possession of them himself."
The alcaide of the prison turned everything to profit. He sold the Government stores, bedding and clothing to the prison bullies who retailed the pieces to individual prisoners. He trafficked in the disciplinary processes, accepting bribes to overlook misconduct, and pandered to the worst vices of the inmates by allowing visitors of both sexes to have free access to them and to bring in all manner of prohibited articles, unlimited drink, and dangerous weapons, knives and daggers and other arms for use in attack and defence in the quarrels and murderous conflicts continually occurring.
A fruitful source of profit was the sale of privileged offices, permits to hawk goods and to trade within the precincts of the prison. Salillas when he visited the Seville prison not many years ago, saw numbers of prisoners selling cigars and cigarettes in the yards, various articles of food, such as gazpacho, the popular salad of Andalusia, compounded of oil and bread soaked in water, and drinks including aguardiente, that powerful Spanish spirit akin to Hollands. Some kept gaming tables and paid a tax on each game and its profits and especially when the "King" was turned up at "Monte."
Salillas publishes a list of prices that ruled for places, privileges and boons conceded to the prisoners. To become a "cabo de vara," a "corporal carrying the stick" or wand of office, cost from eight to sixteen dollars. "Who and what was the Cabo de Vara?" he asks and answers the question. "A hybrid creature the offspring of such diverse parents as the law and crime; half murderer, half robber, who after living in defiance of the law is at least prevented from doing further harm in freedom, is locked up and entrusted with executive authority over companions who have passed through the same evil conditions and are now at his mercy. He is half galley-slave chained to the oar, half public functionary wearing the badge of officialdom and armed with a stick to enforce his authority. He represents two very opposite sets of ideas; on the one hand that of good order and the maintenance of penal discipline, on the other that of a natural inclination towards the wrong doing in which he has been a practitioner and for which he is, in a way, enduring the penalty. To succeed he must possess some strongly marked personal qualities; he should be able to bully and impose his will upon those subjected to his influence, overbearing, masterful, swaggering, ready to take the law into his own hands and insist upon its observance as he chooses to interpret its dictates."
The post of hospital orderly or cook or laundry-man could be secured for about the same price, while a small fee to the prison surgeon gained a perfectly sound man admission to hospital for treatment he did not need, but in which he was much more comfortable than in the ordinary prison. The place of prison barber was to be bought for four dollars; employment as a shoemaker two dollars; relief from a punishment ordered three dollars; permission to pay a visit home, four dollars. These prices were not definitely settled and unchangeable. Where a certain profit could be extracted from a particular post such as the charge of the canteen it was put up to auction and knocked down to the highest bidder.