Spaç prison is remote. Located up a winding dirt road in the sparsely populated district of Mirdita in northern Albania. From the day it was built, it served mining in the valley. Today, looming over the abandoned prison buildings is a huge industrial mine, quarrying the same land prisoners worked over 50 years ago. Instead of the iron fist of communism running the mine, this valley runs on the iron will of capitalism.
The Spaç buildings are shells of their former selves, stripped of anything of value – steel, copper wire, tiles. Time has also taken much of the main building's structural integrity, in it's place are hundreds of red support columns keeping roofs and balconies standing.
Build to house 53 prison miners alongside administrators, guards, and free workers, the 9 buildings witnessed one of the first democratic revolts in Albania's history. For 3 consecutive days, the prisoner's rebellion was successful and anti-communist slogans and dreams of joining the EU were voiced from the building. Special military troops then flooded over the weak, starved, and sleepless prisoners showing no mercy.
With the main building's facade shaded by the angle of the winter sun and the fact that most of the buildings were built facing away from each other, it is easy to project human-like feelings of shame that this location must feel about it's and the regime's role in allowing this notorious labour camp to once exist.
