Franco’s internal deportations: he expelled tens of thousands of migrants from Barcelona to their regions

At the beginning of 47brand new Goya Award for the best film, a handful of families, among which is the protagonist Manolo Vital, try to raise a settlement in what will be the Barrio de Torre Baró, in Barcelona. However, the Civil Guard arrives and demolishes the barracks. In the reality of the Francoist postwar, in the 40s and 50s, that scene could also end with all the barraquistas locked in an internment center and returned to their peoples, which used to be from Andalusia, Murcia or Extremadura.

Franco’s regime fought the internal migrations with hardness until the 60s. Those expelled from the big cities came to be counted for thousands, prior to authentic prisons enabled for it as the Missions Pavilion, in Barcelona, ​​or Matadero, in Madrid, where they were locked under the pretext of being destitute. Now, coinciding with the success of 47a new investigation, collected in the book Paper borders: Francoism and interior migration in the Spanish postwar period (PUV Editorial), has managed to document only from the Catalan capital about 30,000 returns from the end of the war and until 1966.

The author of the work, the historian Miguel Díaz Sánchez, brings new details about the mechanisms of repression of emigration, beginning to point out that these were activated just at the end of the war. Already in September 1939 there is a circular order of the Ministry of the Interior in which the “grown number of people” that went to the large urban and industrial centers in work demand. And the authorities of the municipalities of origin are asked to “restrone their departure”, either due to the search for employment, the “spirit of adventure” or to escape the authorities in the case of those considered as “undesirable.”

Some of the reasons why Franco tried to combat internal migration is deduced from that first guideline. “I wanted to facilitate the social control of the population where it was known, especially thinking of avoiding the displacement of political dissent,” says Diaz on a regime that sought to consolidate in the middle of World War II.

But there were other reasons, the historian adds: avoid large concentrations of proletariat in the city and reinforce the exaltation of rural values, very present in the Franco autarkic period. “You could not allow a Spain that was considered a nation of peasants to be really full of emigrants in the city,” says the historian.

The last resort in the hands of the Francoist authorities to combat arrivals in Barcelona or Madrid were deportations. And tens of thousands of times were used. Until now, historians had documented about 17,000 from the Catalan capital in the period from 1952 to 1957, but Díaz has completed the puzzle from 1945 to 1966, from the archives of the Barcelona City Council, which was the one who managed the internment centers, which distributed the cost of the repatriation tickets with the civil government.

First they operated in the city of seclusion spaces such as the asylum of the park, the asylum of Our Lady of the Port or the Pavilion of Romania. As of 1945, just 80 years ago, the Missions Pavilion was launched, in Montjuïc, which was already used as a prison during the war and had capacity for 500 people. Between 1947 and 1951, 50% of the more than 3,000 expelled passed through that pavilion, according to the data of the Barcelona town hall. It also appears a disturbing figure of 331 deaths in the police station “in custody of the Benemérita”.

The arrests of the newcomers could occur in construction settlements, on the entrance roads to the city and especially upon arrival by train, at the França station. “The testimonies explained that there used to be police vans waiting, even secret guard sometimes, with which the voice quickly ran,” explains Imma Boj, current director of the museum d’istòria of the Immigration of Catalonia (MHIC) and one of the first to document the expulsions through the Missions Pavilion.

For decades, train passengers known as The Sevillian They developed tactics such as dressing and carrying the control accessories or directly jumping from the car before entering the city. If they were finally arrested, they were climbed into a van to the center of Montjuïc.

“They were given a number and separated them between men and women,” says Boj, adding that the conditions were very precarious. “They went hungry, some documents talk about giving them water with broth,” he explains. The time they remained locked was uncertain, basically the one that the authorities took to fill a convoy of repatriated.

Díaz located for his investigation the records of deportees sent by the City Council of Barcelona and preserved in the archive of the Government Delegation in Catalonia. Leaves and leaves full of names, surnames, ages and destination. In total, about 8,500 cases. Most were young men, but there were also women and minors.

It is not clear if for each of them there was an expulsion file, although the historian has found any in the archives of the destination locations. In one of them, from one Antonio, 54, and Albatera (Alicante), reads: “It is referred to the people of its nature for having presented in Barcelona, ​​without work, or resources, also lacking home. It is warned that in case of returning, he will enter the jail. ”

Among the recovered documentation is also a dispute between administrations for the price of the return ticket of the emigrants, which also suggests that the number of returnees could be much greater. Bartolomé Barba, civil governor between 1945 and 1947, sent a report to the Minister of the Interior, Blas Pérez, in which he complained about the cost of repatriations, and encrypted in 52,830 the railway tickets issued to send their villages to emigrants only between August 45 and December of 46, with their monthly breakdown.

However, Díaz considers that this data has to be taken cautiously, which for example could also include partially paid voluntary returns with the so -called “homeless ticket”.

The repression of emigration failed to eradicate it. As is known, migratory balances were growing in large cities. Padrón changes between provinces went from 500,000 in the 1940s to 1.1 million in the 50s, to finally give way to the great boom Spanish migratory of the 60s, with 1.9 million estimated displacements.

The reality of deportations changed with the change of economic course that printed the regime from 1957, two years later materialized in the stabilization plan. Although the expulsions did not cease, they were reduced in number. That same year, the evacuation delegation of the civil government was also closed in Barcelona.

“The liberalization of labor required displacements between territories, from one productive sector to another, and the regime begins to conceive the migration of the countryside to the city under an economic and non -police logic,” concludes Díaz. They were the years of developmentalism in Spain, when urban peripheries such as Torre Baró and so many others were consolidated and extended, almost never accompanied by the necessary services and public transport, as attest 47.