Laura de Grado Alonso | Madrid – January 27, 2021
Just as Federico Garcia Lorca brought the theater closer to the people through La Barraca theater company between 1932 and 1936, the project “To the forgotten ones” carries books dedicated to inmates of the Spanish penitentiary system with the aim of generating reflection and debate around a invisible collective for society, but also for the literature serve female prisoners as window to freedom.
Thus, at least, they like to imagine the creators of the project, who describe how feminist, cultural, supportive, poetic and transformative, in and out of prison.
6,000 books to imprisoned women
“To the forgotten ones” began its journey in July 2018 taking 680 books to the jail of Soto del Real. More than two years later, the project “has only grown”, it has visited seven prisons – Soto del Real, León, Córdoba, Alcalá Meco, Aranjuez, Estremera and Granada – and has about 6,000 books dedicated.
Your next stop is Alicante prison, for which you can send books dedicated to calle Hortaleza, 20. 2º left 28004 (Madrid) until February 15.
Curiously, the initiative was forged in a bookstore when the creator, Maria Rufilanchas, he complained loudly because he did not know what to do with the large number of books he had at home. The voice of Mercedes, a woman who was at the premises, broke in with the response to her complaint and with the beginning of this journey: “Donate them to a library or a prison”.
Until that moment, Rufilanchas “had no idea of the situation of women deprived of liberty“, He confesses, and that is why he did not hesitate to bring reality closer from the dams to the rest of society.
Mixed and away from their families
According to the figures of Penitentiary Institutions of January 2020, in Spain women make up 7.4% of the prison population, a percentage higher than 5% of European countries for which there are statistics, according to the latest Council of Europe Annual Criminal Statistics (SPACE) report, prepared with data from 2018.
In Spain there are only four women’s prisons: Brieva (Ávila), Alcalá Meco (Madrid), Alcalá de Guadaira (Seville) and Wad-Ras (Barcelona), the rest are modules for women in men’s prisons.
“Being a minority brings many deficiencies“, Explain Mercedes Martin, voluntary and responsible for communication of the Association of Collaborators with women prisoners (Acope), which provides support to women deprived of liberty, attending to their specific needs in prison.
Among them, the majority of women are in women’s modules within prisons designed for men, explains Martín.
And he adds that “being locked in a module there is no division option as in the men’s modules and the convicted women and the preventive women, the repeat offenders and the novices, of different ages, drug users and not are mixed ”.
“There is eleven provinces that have no option for them, so women, in general, are further from their cores relatives and, therefore, less visited ”, asserts the spokesperson for Acope, who criticizes that “there is no gender perspective in the programs applied to them ”.
Greater social condemnation
A situation that adds to the social condemnation towards the inmates and the consequences that the deprivation of their liberty may entail.
“There is a greater social condemnation for the crime against women because they have acted against what is expected of a woman, they have failed to perform the roles of women and mothers that society expects of her, ”continues the Acope volunteer.
“They comply four convictions: the judicial, that of being a woman in a prison, the social and the personal ”, she adds Maria Lorenzo, project coordinator of the Gabeiras Foundation, who collaborates with “A las forgotten” in this call.
Previous victimization
Also from Acope they point out that there is a previous victimization that leads many women to commit crimes, as they are “Assaults and abuses that give rise to addictions”, that they “are the sustenance of the” single-mother families, they take care of the children and the maintenance of the house “or, even,” sometimes they bear the crime of a relative. “
According to the study “Violence against Women: Analysis in the female prison population”, carried out by the SURT Foundation in 2005, the last in Spain of these characteristics, the 80.4% of women inmates have suffered abuse at some point in their lives.
He profile of women in prison responds to crimes “little violent”, adds the volunteer. Of the total of 4,322 inmates, 35% (1,516) are incarcerated for crimes against heritage and the socioeconomic order and 24% for crimes against Public Health (1,036), according to data from the General Secretary of Penitentiary Institutions.
“Prisons do not reeducate”
For this reason, after the question “What book would you give to a woman who is in jail?” the initiative “A las forgotten”, of the Teta & teta community, also aims to reflect to society on the situation of prisons and their capacity for reintegration once the sentence has been served.
“Prisons do not reeducate, they simply punish”says the promoter of the initiative. For Rufilanchas, the prisons “dehumanize a lot and therefore do not help a person can correct your mistake“.
After more than two years bringing books to prisons, the Teta & Teta Cultural Association now wants to go one step further and that is why, together with the Gaberias Foundation and Penitentiary Institutions, they have created a cultural mediation project to guarantee the right of access and participation in cultural life.
“The voice that nobody hears”, which is named after a verse of Concepción Arenal, It aims to introduce modifications in prison policy, making the benefits that this type of cultural programs can have on the prison population visible and tangible.
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