Carl Geiser on San Pedro de Cardenas

When looking through my past blog entries, I found the Al Tocar Diana record of songs from the San Pedro de Cardenas prison. The prison interests me because of the complex, sophisticated community that the captives formed in order to pass the time and raise their standards of living. Instead of submitting to depression under their dirty, oppressive conditions, they created a civilized community, albeit with rats and guards everywhere. They lectured each other on topics they knew about, taught each other to read and write, and formed a choir and other musical groups. Some even carved their meagre soap rations into chess pieces to entertain themselves, and give their brains some exercise. I am fascinated by how people maintain their sanity under extreme conditions like living in the San Pedro de Cardenas concentration camp, and the value the prisoners place in education.

When I typed in San Pedro de Cardenas on the Search Finding Aids function of the ALBA website, I found out that veteran Carl Geiser had researched and written a book in the 1980s about international prisoners during the war. I researched the box relating to his book in the archives. Geiser must have been in his 70s or 80s when writing this book, which shows that Spain stayed close to his heart throughout his life. The fact that he wrote the book so late in his life is probably due to the fact that he couldn't safely get information about the prisons when Franco still lived and held power. Therefore, he had to wait until the 70s to really have a chance to research the war.

El Sid, the Spanish epic poet, is buried at San Pedro de Cardenas, which has been a monastary since 900 CE. The book "In Spain" gorgeously describes the tranquility of Cardenas, and does not mention its period as a prison, but rather speaks of a lonely, forgotten church. I think the book was written before the Spanish Civil War. It seems weird to me that Franco would choose the sacred sight of Cardenas as the location for his prison, but perhaps as the author of In Spain describes, the area was abandoned and forgotten by the time of the war.

650 international brigaders and thousands of Basques were held there, the site being 11 miles SE of Burgos. Geiser has accumulated the prison diary notes of many of the inmates describing the conditions and activities. He describes how two monks lectured the prisoners daily in an attempt to "reeducate" them. I can guess how effective that plan was... I wonder why Franco would bother trying to win over the minds of his prisoners, and why he would think that it would work.

In another interesting note, Geiser asks why a prisoner who committed suicide was buried at Burgos instead of at the Monastary like the other prisoners. He suspects that the priests refused to taint the hallowed ground with the sin of suicide.

Many soldiers describe the educational programs that took place in the camp. Reading and writing classes were held in many different languages, party so that men could learn how to send home letters to their families. This also matches up with the Republic's emphasis on education as a tool of warfare, and the philosophy that an educated person would support the Republic and have more power. In addition to language and literacy study, which even included the doomed super-language, Esperanto, many of the soldiers lectured each other on their own fields of expertise. The lecture topics varied greatly from "Zoos and Circuses" to "Painting" to "Hiking in the Adirondacks" to "Exploring for Chinchilla in the Andes." The whole school, called the San Pedro Institute of Higher Learning, played host to 285 students in 19 different classes. The men used their extra money to buy paper, pens, and books. Lectures began at 9:30 in the morning, and would often extend late into the evening. One homework assignment I particularly enjoyed was when the volunteers split into 20 different book groups to read and discuss Lawrence of Arabia. The sophistication and civilized nature by which the soldiers kept themselves busy amazes me.

I've only delved into half of one folder of the entire box of info about the prison so there is lots more to discover. Do you think I could make a research project about this prison?