Prisons re-open facilities
The five Catalan prisons with a pool reopen facilities, inoperative for the past four years; inmates emphasize benefits of swimming to combat prison stress
The water sports facilities opened in five new Catalan prisons - Brians 2, Lledoners, Joves, Figueres and Tarragona - have always been viewed with a level of distrust, which hit rock bottom in 2012 when they were closed “for budgetary reasons” under Germà Gordó. Along with the prejudice, this factor seems to have finally been overcome this summer with the reopening of the five pools behind the wire-topped walls.
“When I'm in the water I mentally disconnect, losing the tension that builds up in prison. But when I get out I'm very clear on where I am, and that is prison.” These are the words of Omar, a 36 year-old prisoner who works supporting two monitors in the Brians 2 pool.
A fellow prisoner, Iñaki, 26, remembers the feeling he experienced the first time he submerged himself in water after almost three years of not being able to. “It was amazing to swim again after so long. I felt free,” he laughs with a broad smile of satisfaction, knowing that the sport he first learnt in prison is changing his life.
“Outside I weighed 110 kilos and I'd never done any sport. Now I know for sure that when I get out I'll keep up the exercise. Sport has taught me to get the best out of myself and meet mygoals”, says this young man whose reclusion has led to him working up an athletic body that leaves no evidence of his past obesity problems. Iñaki came to Brians two and a half years ago from a prison in Brazil, where he was arrested and sentenced for a crime he committed there. Two different countries, two prison worlds that have nothing in common. “In Brazil, it's impossible to think that a prison can have a pool. It's different here”, he says.