Summary - TST 25

TRANSPORTES, SERVICIOS Y TELECOMUNICACIONES


Key Words: Forced labour, railway infrastructures, Spanish Civil War, Franco´s Dictatorship.

[ Abstract ]

In this paper we analyse the deployment of prisoners and prisoners of war (POW) repairing and improving railway infrastructures during Spanish Civil War and Franco´s dictatorship. In the first part we take account of methodological problems that this kind of research has to face, mainly due to the scattered and incomplete historical documentation available for historians. After that we present a quantitative estimate of the global volume of prisoners and POWs working in these infrastructures, according to the different kind of tasks carried out: repairing of war damages, double way works, or the opening of new railway lines. For each on these modalities, we analyse the chronological evolution, as well as the main places were these captive men worked.