Los internados del miedo: cuando la realidad supera la ficción

Abstract

In 2002, journalists Montse Armengou and Ricard Belis made Los niños perdidos del franquismo (Els nens perduts du franquisme), a documentary for TV3-Televisio de Catalunya, in Spain. The filmed material partially summarized what they would turn into a homonymous book. But after finishing their research, the accusations ketp coming. As Belis points out, the lack of evindentiary documents was not an issue, since they were a lot of denouncements that had to be deal with. This way, filmmakers focussed on an unknown episode in the Spanish past. Los internados del miedo could easily be the title of a horror film, but it isn’t, since truth is stranger than fiction. Los internados del miedo (Els internats de la por, 2015) by Montse Armengou and Ricard Belis, gathers the testimonies of humiliations, deprivation and even medical experiments of the victims of the Francoist Boarding Schools. Psychiatric Hospitals, Preventorioums, Orphanages and Boarding schools left a despicable mark in Spanish history, in which torture, rape, child labour and children trafficking played a significant role. We intend to tackle this documentary material in order to help restore the voice and identity of the silenced victims. Was poverty one of the causes of their situation? What happened to the single mothers’ children? And those whose parents were well known anti-Francoist? This and other questions will guide our search. We will try to establish the causes that put those minors in a situation of terrible vulnerability, turning them in a easy target for such practices. We must not fotget that in fragrant connivance the State, the Church and some companies, were responsible of a macabre and systematic programme.