It is no coincidence that the largest group of mostly official images consists of photographs of the Feast of Our Lady of Mercy, patroness of prisons, on September 24.
The celebrations included an extraordinary visit, during which the children of female and male inmates could spend much of the day inside the prison grounds. In women’s prisons, it is easy to imagine the significance of this festivity for inmates whose children were outside, under the care of relatives. These were precisely the images favoured by the regime when publicising its penitentiary management, as they drew on an immensely valuable resource: the genuine emotions of the imprisoned mothers and their companions.
We have included several photographs by two important Catalan photojournalists, Josep Postius and Carlos Pérez de Rozas, housed in the AFB (Barcelona Photographic Archive), all related to the Feast of Our Lady of Mercy. In the photographs from the 1950s, the notable presence of Roma women inmates is evident.
