CHAPTER VII
PRESIDIOS AT HOME AND ABROAD
The presidio or convict prison—Stations at home and in Northern Africa—Convict labour—Cruelties inflicted on the presidiarios employed in road making—Severity of the régime at Valladolid—Evils of overcrowding—Ceuta—Its fortifications—Early history—The entierro or "Spanish swindle"—Several interesting instances—Monsignor X—Armand Carron—M. Elked—Credulity of the victims—Boldness of the swindlers—Attempt to dupe a Yorkshire squire—Discovery of the fraud.
The Spanish "presidios" or penal establishments for offenders sentenced to long terms are the counterpart of the English convict prisons. They are of two classes, those at home in provincial capitals or in fortresses and strongholds, and those abroad installed in North Africa, as the alternative or substitute for the penal colonies beyond the sea established by Italy and France. Home presidios are at Burgos, Cartagena, Granada, Ocana, Santona, Valladolid and Saragossa. There are two at Valencia, one at Tarragona and two more at Alcalá de Henares. Of the foregoing that of Cartagena was especially constructed to meet the needs of the arsenal and dockyard and is spoken of as deplorably deficient by those who visited it. Four hundred convicts were lodged miserably in one dormitory; their bedding consisted of a rough mattress and one brown rug; clothing was issued only every two years; the dietaries were supplied by a thievish contractor who supplied a soup consisting of beans boiled in water, abstracting the ration of oil and bacon. A presidio of ancient date was installed in the arsenal of La Carraca near Cadiz, a survival really of the galera or galleys planted on shore when human motive power ceased to be used in propelling warships.
Castel dell' Ovo
Situated on a high rocky island near the shore of Naples, it was a place of great security. A number of the islands in the bay of Naples have been utilised as prisons and as penal settlements.
A terrible story is preserved of the cruelties inflicted on a number of these presidiarios employed to make the road between San Lucar de Barrameda and Puerto Santa Maria. Their labour was leased to an inhuman contractor who worked them literally to death. They were half-starved, over-burthened with chains and continually flogged so that within one year half their whole number of one thousand had disappeared; they had died "of privation, of blows, hunger, cold, insufficient clothing and continuous neglect." The contractor cleared a large profit, but lost it and died in extreme poverty after having been arraigned and tried for his life as a murderer.
The presidio of Valladolid was also condemned for the severity of its régime. The climate alternated between great summer heat and extreme cold in winter, but the convicts worked in the quarries in all weathers. The death record rose in this prison to such a high figure that a third of the average total population of three thousand perished within eighteen months. The general average of the presidios was low but as a rule the death rate was not high. Even when twenty per cent. of males and twenty-five per cent. of the females were sick and hospital accommodation was scarce and imperfect, the deaths did not exceed two and a half per cent. per annum and this included the fatal results of quarrels ending in duels to the death. One of the most serious evils was overcrowding. Official figures give the prison population as about nineteen thousand and the available house-room was for not more than twelve thousand. Salillas puts it at a much lower total, asserting there was barely room for three thousand.