In the annual tribute to the Franco slaves in Bidakonz, this year the members of the LGTBI+ group will play a special role. During the 1936 war and the long post-war period, many people were detained and repressed from their sexual identity.

Many have just worked as slaves and will remember it on Saturday, June 17 at the height of Igariko, which joins the valleys of Roncal and Salazar, in the act that the Camino de la Memoria group performs. Among other activities, there will be a musical performance and a self-managed meal.

This road between Igari and Vidángoz was built by the slaves of Franco between 1939 and 1941. According to historians, over 2,000 people worked on the road in very precarious conditions. On the top of Igari you can see a reproduction of the barracks currently used by the slaves.

Researchers Fernando Mendiola and Edurne Beaumont analyzed in depth the case of Igari, in the book Slaves of Franco in the Pyrenees (Francoist Slaves), published in 2006 with Txalaparta, in which they claim that many prisoners, "it is impossible to know how many were", decided to escape and that some of them were killed by guards during the flight.

In the workers' battalions were the political dissidents and those that the regime considered "dangerous", among which, of course, there were people who did not conform to the patriarchal model of national-catholic relationship.

Agricultural colony of Tefia

So much was the social cleansing intended by Franco, creating spaces of concentration for various groups.

As the Steilas union pointed out, many LGTBI+ members were forced to perform forced labour in the Tefia area of Fuerteventura, a kind of rural colony that actually became a macabre prison.

Created on the basis of the Spanish law Vagos y Maleantes ("Alperrak eta gaiztaginak") around 1954, this camp of Tefia was in the middle of a desert, an old aerodrome, and was led during the first years by an old carmelite, supposedly vitorian, with hard hands, beatings, hunger, humiliation and sexual repression.

It was closed in 1966 and currently has a youth hostel.