Fyffes Prison

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Sites of memory · Year: 1936

Fyffes Prison, South Coast Military Prison, Fyffes or Faifes Halls, by all these names was known a now disappeared enclosure, made up of a series of warehouses and packing areas for bananas and tomatoes that served, during the Civil War and post-war years, as a place of detention and internment camp for numerous prisoners opposed to the Francoist side.

The internment centre began operating in September 1936, when the ordinary prison facilities could not cope with the number of arrests made by the rebel side.

Located in what were then the outskirts of the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, on the now urbanised land of the lower part of Avenida de los Reyes Católicos, the prison occupied three large warehouses that had belonged to the English company Fyffes, dedicated to the fruit business between the Canary Islands and the United Kingdom. Prisoners were crammed into those warehouses. It also had two cells: one for punishment, and another intended for those sentenced to the ultimate penalty, where they remained until transfer for execution. Shortly afterwards, a yard of about one hundred square metres surrounded by wire fencing was added. Services and showers were located there.

Living conditions in this place became very harsh. The roofs of the halls were made of zinc, causing stifling heat in summer and a cold, damp interior in winter. Food was scarce, as was hygiene, due to overcrowding. At the beginning of 1937, it is estimated that the enclosure housed nearly 1,300 prisoners, when its maximum capacity had been estimated at less than half. 

Between October 1936 and February 1937 the most extreme and harsh conditions were established. At night prisoners were abruptly woken and a series of names of inmates were read out who were separated from the group and taken out of the enclosure. Nothing was heard of them again; they disappeared, some murdered and their bodies thrown into the sea; others executed without trial on Monte de la Esperanza or in Las Cañadas.

After the war ended, the conditions of the prison were softened. Prisoners who still remained there were gradually granted parole, with those arrested in the Republican zone after the conflict ended now entering. They too would leave the prison in subsequent years, according to the length of the sentence imposed.

Fyffes ceased to function as a military prison for political prisoners in 1949. Nothing remains today of its gloomy facilities. They were demolished in the seventies.

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