From prison cell to workshop. The dueso penitentiary (Santoña, Spain), a penal Colony essay in the first decades of the Twentieth century

Abstract

The Dueso penitentiary was set up in 1907 as an attempt on a Spanish scale at the first peninsular penal colony, that is to say it was established in the Peninsula in accordance with the reformist approach of the most prominent Spanish criminalists at this intersecular time. This remarkable architectural project, initially approved for this imprisonment space, never reached total development, due to diverse obstacles faced throughout the first years of construction and operation and as a result, many changes and transformations were already suffered in the first decades of the twentieth century. This paper discusses in great detail the historical and territorial factors which explain the origins of this space and the operational logic as a social regeneration project of ideological control and management of the convict workforce.