Torture in Modern Spain

Abstract

This article explores how the notion of torture developed in Spain throughout the nineteeth century, becoming eventually a tool for denouncing state repression. It first considers torture in the early part of the century and the abolition of judicial torture and los apremios (any form of coercion used against an accused while in custody). It argues that the acceptance that legalised torture was inhumane helped to foreground another form of torture not yet named: government torture (the institutional violence used in spaces of detention and imprisonment to force detainees to confess and implicate others or as an additional punishment for prisoners). Hidden behind a variety of terms such as tormento, maltratamientos (mistreatment) and malos tratos (ill-treatment) it was not until after the formation of the liberal state that “government torture” came to acquire its modern meaning around the turn of the twentieth century.