The Government of Spain has already begun the process for the Penitentiary Agricultural Colony of Tefía, in Fuerteventura, to be declared a Place of Democratic Memory. The opening is published today in the BOE, the same day that the Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, has signed a grant of 100,000 euros for the Cabildo of Fuerteventura aimed at the musealisation of this site, symbol of the repression of the LGTBI collective during the dictatorship.
Homosexuals were one of the groups most persecuted by the Franco dictatorship, with more intensity since 1954, with the modification of the Law of Vagos and Maleantes, to expressly include homosexuality as a "dangerous state", and also establishing their internment in "special institutions" with separation from other inmates.
To house these people, the Agricultural Penitentiary Colony of Tefía was built, where more than a hundred inmates were interned. Located in a desert area of the island of Fuerteventura, the Agricultural Colony aimed to turn that place into arable land through the forced work of the prisoners. The inmates, who were regularly monitored and subjected to ill-treatment, slept overcrowded in pavilions in unhealthy conditions. His working day extended from dawn to dusk, with the obligation to stone and pay for infertile land.
The Agricultural Penitentiary Colony of Tefía became the main center for the repression of sexual dissidents under the Franco regime. With the opening of the regime to tourism, it changed the penal regulations towards homosexuals and the Law of Vagrants and Malefactors was repealed by the Law of Dangerousness and Social Rehabilitation, which no longer punished the condition of being homosexual but those who "exercise acts of homosexuality", although, the repression continued, although homosexuals were excluded from the custodial sentences in the Agricultural Penitentiary Colonies.
Minister Torres has signed with the president of the Cabildo of Fuerteventura, Lola García, a grant of 100,000 euros to turn the Agricultural Colony into the Canarian center of interpretation of the LGTBIQ historical memory. This action involves deepening the study on the causes and consequences of the LGBTIQ repression of the Canary Islands, based on the historical analysis of what happened in Tefía and the edition of the precise documentary, graphic and audiovisual media that are part of the Interpretation Center.
The Agricultural Colony closed its doors in 1966. The homosexuals declared dangerous there complied with detention measures, as they also did in other Spanish prisons.