Repurposed confessional

The failure of the attempted coup of 18 July 1936 and the subsequent start of the Civil War initiated a two-sided phenomenon that developed in the two home fronts. While the rebel side experienced a process of re-Catholicization, the rest of the country, except for the Basque Provinces, experienced one of secularization. This refers not to the destruction of religious patrimony, but rather to the suppression of religious practice and the complete transformation of the way religious spaces and objects were used. Church buildings were repurposed as barracks, dining halls, workshops, prisons, storehouses, granaries, and even cinemas. In some cases, buildings were used for multiple purposes.

At the same time, the religious objects and furnishings in those buildings were also repurposed and given functions very different from their intended ones. 

The photograph shows an example of this: a confessional being used as a sentry box on the Madrid-Valencia highway. We see a militiaman posing inside the confessional on which had been painted the initials of the General Workers’ Union (UGT) and the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI), as well as the slogan “Unite Proletarian Brothers” (UHP). There are other photographs of confessionals being used in the same way.

Two factors help explain this repurposing. The first is its form. Confessionals and sentry boxes share similar forms. Both are small spaces that can be rectangular, with only one entrance and, sometimes, Windows, and made of Wood. The second is its original purpose. Like sentry boxes, confessionals are used for surveillance. While the former are used to surveille the population in both rural and urban areas, as well as buildings and roads, the latter are the places where priests watch over the morality and behavious of their parishioners.

AGG