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La inauguración del embalse del Cenajo

Hellín, Campos de Hellín, Albacete

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La inauguración del embalse del Cenajo

Historical milestone · Hellín, Campos de Hellín, Albacete

Image of Hellín, not of the place itself.

Franco inaugurated the largest dam of its time, built on the Segura river on the border between Albacete and Murcia to check the floods of the Murcian plain; its construction, directed from 1948, was carried out by political prisoners under a sentence-redemption scheme. Between 1943 and 1952 the first works were carried out, with up to 350 workers, among them political and common prisoners from the jails of Hellín and Las Minas. In 1947 a workers' settlement was built with a wash-house, chapel, barracks and shops, and in 1952 the Cenajo Penal Detachment began operating. The work was awarded to Construcciones Civiles, a company that also built the Valle de los Caídos; in total 7,700 workers took part. In 1954 three workers died falling from a height of 76 metres, in whose honour a cross was erected.

6 de junio de 1963

Photo: Antonio Periago Miñarro from Murcia, España (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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