Metadata: Concentration and Classification Camp of Foreigners in Miranda de Ebro (Burgos)
Collection
- Country:
- Spain
- Holding institution:
- Military General Archive in Guadalajara
- Holding institution (official language):
- Archivo General Militar de Guadalajara
- Postal address:
- Avenida del Ejercito 2. 19004 - Guadalajara
- Phone number:
- +34 949 213 935
- Email:
- agm_guadalajara@et.mde.es
- Title:
- Concentration and Classification Camp of Foreigners in Miranda de Ebro (Burgos)
- Title (official language):
- Deposito de concentracion y clasificacion de personal extranjero de Miranda de Ebro (Burgos)
- Creator/accumulator:
- Concentration and Classification Camp of Miranda de Ebro
- Date(s):
- 1940/1980
- Language:
- Spanish; Castilian
- Extent:
- 119 boxes
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- Good
- Scope and content:
-
World War II caused large movements of people to cross the Spanish frontier in order to flee the conflict. In some cases, they reached Spain without being arrested. From Spain, they intended to go to North Africa, Portugal, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, etc. Sixteen-thousand individuals, of 70 different nationalities, were interned in civil and military prisons and camps before being transferred. Under the legal status of refugees and war prisoners, they were taken into military custody until their release and repatriation.
Most of the foreign internees in Miranda de Ebro were taken into military custody from the summer of 1940 up to the last days of 1946, because of their status as refugees or war prisoners. Another group of foreign internees was composed of former members of the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War, who had been imprisoned in other camps after being arrested or were in the 75th Workers Disciplinary Battalion. When the documentation of Miranda de Ebro was sent to the Sub-secretary, the files of individuals interned in disciplinary units (camps and battalions) were classified alphabetically as foreign internees’ files, noting their politics vis-à-vis the Spanish Civil War.
For the files with information on foreigners (AGMG. DCME, boxes 305,279 to 305,382), the document type is composed of interrogations and filiations tabs (“fichas de filiación”). The latter, used to classify internees upon entering the Miranda de Ebro camp, are cards containing information on the identity of each prisoner, such as whether the prisoners came from belligerent or non-belligerent countries; were of military age; belonged to a specific age group (over 40 or 50 years old or under 18 or 20); were war prisoners who had fled from European or North-African concentration camps; were doctors, priests, "undesirable aliens," deserters, etc.
The filiations tabs are preserved in almost all of the files, unlike the interrogations, which have disappeared in many cases. The interrogations, whose content is very similar, were conducted at the time of the arrest, in police stations and prisons, in the Miranda de Ebro camp, and in the Civil Guard Information Service Offices.
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In addition to filiations tabs and interrogations, the files preserved private correspondence, marked by military censorship; petitions or personal instances about different matters; private documentation surrendered at the time of the arrest that was not delivered when the internee was released from Miranda; claims by diplomats and the Red Cross requesting release and subsequent repatriation; etc.
From the first internees in the summer of 1940 up to the closure of Miranda de Ebro camp in February 1947, it can be noted that the phases of the War were reflected in the increase and decrease of internees, according to the nationalities involved in the conflict. In Miranda de Ebro camp there were people from France (around 6,500), Germany (around 2,000), Canada (over 2,000), Poland (over 1,000), Andorra, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Panama, Venezuela, and Tunisia.
The total admissions per year reached its peak in 1943, with a sum of 6,800 internees, doubling the amount registered in 1942. Despite the German surrender in May 1945, refugees and former prisoners were interned at the Miranda de Ebro camp until 1946. The last admissions are dated December 1946, and the camp was liquidated in February 1947.
Among the 15,221 files of entered internees, there is information about Jews. Some of them were defined as stateless.
- Archival history:
- When the Spanish Civil War ended, a large number of disciplinary units (concentration camps, interned prisoners, forced labor battalions, etc.) were re-organized. The first documentary fonds and files of these units (such as the files of foreigners) entered the Military General Archive in Guadalajara in 1983 from the Military General Archive in Segovia. These files had been sent to the Military General Archive in Segovia in two groups (1957 and 1972) by the Liquidation Commission of the Camps and Battalions Headquarters (“Comision Liquidadora de la Jefatura de Campos y Batallones”). This Commission took care of the archives of battalions and of Miranda’s camp after its liquidation at the end of 1942 and in 1947, respectively.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
The Miranda de Ebro’s concentration camp was active from 1937 to 1947, with two periods of activity. The first started in 1937, with the purpose of interning war prisoners from the Spanish Civil War, who were sentenced to battalions of work-soldiers. The second period began in the summer of 1940, with the arrival of war prisoners and foreign refugees fleeing Europe through Spain because of WWII. Once they were released, their repatriations were carried out by their embassies, the Red Cross, and National Delegations. The overcrowding of the Medina de Ebro’s concentration camp led to the use of buildings of nearby spa facilities, such as Sobron, Urberuaga de Ubilla, Molinar de Carranza and Jaraba, where foreign officers of the belligerent armies, who were arrested on the Pyrenean border, were interned between 1943 and 1945.
The Miranda de Ebro’s documentation kept in the Military General Archive in Guadalajara belongs to the second period of the camp. The documents contain entry and release records of foreigners, relationships between internees and released prisoners, background on the opening and closing of the camp, economic matters, prisoners’ escapes, etc.
- Access points: locations:
- Canada
- Castilla y Leon
- France
- Germany
- Guadalajara
- Miranda de Ebro
- Poland
- Segovia
- Spain
- Turkey
- Access, restrictions:
- Free access regulated by the current legal environment on access to Spanish historical archives (law 16/1985 of Spanish Historical Patrimony).
- Finding aids:
- An inventory of the collection is available at the archive. The indexes have been made separately, but they have the same content: signature, surnames and names, sorted alphabetically, and nationality. Data on the collection are available at the website of the Spanish Cultural Patrimony of Defense.
- Links to finding aids:
- https://patrimoniocultural.defensa.gob.es/
- Yerusha Network member:
- Spanish National Research Council
- Author of the description:
- Marina Girona Berenguer; ILC, CSIC; September 2019
