Passport To Hell: How I Survived Sadistic Prison Guards and Hardened Criminals in Spain's Toughest Prisons

by Terry Daniels

  Our cell was cramped and claustrophobic. It had a bunk bed at one side and a shower at the other, which seemed to randomly alternate between being freezing cold and boiling hot. I was tired, upset and dehydrated so I headed straight to bed without bothering to try and chat to the drug mule. She did the same, presumably attempting to drift off in order to forget about what she had just been through.

  As I lay and tried to get to sleep, the reality of the situation began to hit home. I was in a foreign country, locked up in a place where nobody cared if I lived or died. I still hadn't been given anything to drink and didn't fancy drinking shower water. My throat felt like I had gargled a pint of sand and I couldn't stop shivering from the cold. Was I going to come out of the other side of this a stronger person or would it leave me irreparably damaged? Only I had the power to determine the answer.

  Chapter 16

  LIFE IN SOTO DEL REAL

  I can't talk to anyone about what's going on. I feel so alone and useless. Please God, I hope someone outside of here is trying to help me because I feel like I'm going mad. I have no rights in here – none at all. Today I feel sick with nerves. I really don't know how much more of this uncertainty I can take. I'm cold, tired, anxious, nervous, depressed, and worried about everything. It's been five days since I left England and still no contact with my family or the outside world.

  Diary entry from 24 October 2005

  'Buenos días. Es hora de desayunar.'

  I tried to blot out the booming voice of the guard and the heavy, metallic clanking noise that accompanied it but eventually gave in and prised my tired eyes open to see what he wanted. It was 7 a.m. and I had barely slept a wink. My mind and body were still wracked with nicotine withdrawal so I was particularly irritable. The noise had been made by a hatch in the door being opened and two steel trays of coffee and croissants being shoved through. At least now I would be able to rehydrate my arid throat so that it didn't feel as if I had just swallowed a cactus.

  As I perched on the edge of the bed and sipped my coffee, it suddenly struck me that I would soon have to leave the cell and face the other prisoners. Would I be a novelty like I had been in the holding cell or would there be other English people in the prison? I didn't fancy the idea of being unable to communicate with anybody for the next decade. It would no doubt send me totally loopy.

  I was just finishing off my last mouthful of croissant when the door slid open and a tall, dark-haired convict came striding into the room.

  'Hello there. How are you finding things in Soto then?'

  'You're from England,' I gasped

  'You noticed then?' he joked, plonking himself down next to me on the bed. 'The screws sent me to translate for you when you go to see the doctor, which you'll be doing in a bit. They need to check out everybody coming into the prison but there wouldn't be much point in them asking you questions in Spanish when you can't speak a lick of it, would there?'

  By this stage I was grinning from ear to ear. I can't even begin to describe how good it felt to have a fellow Englishman to talk to. I hadn't had a proper conversation for twenty-four hours, which meant I spent the next ten minutes firing off as many questions as I could think of at him.

  'What are the other prisoners like? Are there any other English girls here? And how come you're on the women's wing?'

  'Whoa there, slow down a bit,' he chortled. 'You're going to wear me out. The other cons are mostly OK, but it's a prison so there's bound to be a few wrong 'uns. There are quite a few English girls and they look after their own so you'll be all right. And the guys and girls are mostly kept separate but it's not that strict. We get to see the girlies at the gym so it's not like in England, where you come out forgetting what they look like. Oh and by the way, my name is Jeff. It was nice of you to ask!'

  In my hurry to pick his brains about the prison, I had forgotten to ask him anything about himself.

  'What did you do to end up in here then, Jeff?' I smiled back.

  'Got involved with drugs, same as most people in Soto,' he told me. 'You do the crime, you do the time, eh? It's a bit of a rough old gaff to be banged-up in though. They give you nothing and lots of it and you still have to fight for your fair share of it.'

  Jeff went on to explain that Soto was the largest prison in Madrid, with a population of just under 2,000. Some of the inmates were men, some were women and there was a mother and baby wing for girls who had given birth behind bars. I wondered what type of a future a kid who was born in a place like that would have. One thing was for certain; it sure wouldn't be a bright one.

  After clueing me up on every aspect of prison life, Jeff told me that it was time for me to see the doctor and escorted me out of the cell. He took me down a flight of stairs into a small office, where a little, beady-looking Spanish bloke was sat behind a desk.

  '¿Tiene algún problema de salud?' the bloke asked me.

  'He wants to know if you've got any problems with your health at the moment,' Jeff translated.

  'I've recently recovered from an aneurysm,' I replied, unsure of whether to direct my answer towards Jeff or the doctor. 'I sometimes have problems sleeping too and get very anxious and depressed. I've had a bit of a headache since I came into the prison as well, which might be down to stress.'

  'Es alérgico a algún medicamento?'

  'He wants to know if you're allergic to any medication.'

  'Yes paracetamol,' I answered. 'It can make me really ill.'

  The doctor didn't seem to be taking note of anything that I said. He gave me a quick look over and then told me that the check-up had finished. I had a feeling that I was on my own if I fell ill in Soto. This guy seemed completely disinterested to the point where he could hardly wait to get me out of the room.

  'OK you're allowed a phone call now,' Jeff told me as I shuffled out of the exit back into the hustle and bustle of the prison. 'They've got a funny rule where you can only use your free phone call to ring Madrid numbers though.'

  Was he being serious? Mum would be worried sick if she didn't hear from me. She didn't even know what prison I was in. This was even more worrying than the fact that I was clearly going to have to go without proper healthcare for the next decade.

  'I'm going to have to ring the British Consulate then,' I sighed.

  It was as if the governor of the jail was determined to make things as difficult as possible for the foreign prisoners. Jeff took me to another office, where a guard stood over me whilst I dialled the number. I told the woman on the other end of the line to ring Mum as soon as possible to let her know where I was.

  'OK we'll do that for you,' she assured me. 'We'll also send somebody to the prison to check up on you. They'll make sure that you're being treated OK.'

  As soon as I hung up the phone, the guard escorted me out of the door and took me down to the cafeteria, where I was given a tray of food and sent back to my cell. My meal – a piece of ham, a potato and a bit of slimy salad – looked vaguely edible but not particularly appetising. I was going to have to get used to eating lettuce that a slug would have turned down. If the state of the medical care was anything to go by then the staff at Soto didn't see the prisoners as being worthy of anything above the minimum standards that were required for survival.

  I had just finished the last bite when the door slid open and another guard came bowling in.

  'Come,' he told me. 'You go to main wing now. Get your things.'

  It was nice of him to give me so much prior warning. I grabbed the few belongings that I had and trailed behind him through a door into a bigger, noisier section of the jail. He escorted me to a cell, shoved me inside and then walked away as if I didn't even merit talking to.

  There was a girl already in the room who could have passed for Skeletor's stunt double. She was as skinny as a whippet with a scruffy, feral look to her, as if the need for taking copious amounts of crack and heroin had long since overtaken her need for basic personal hygiene.

  'Hi, I'm Terry,' I told her. 'It
looks like we're going to be living together.'

  'No lo entiendo.'

  'Do you speak any English?'

  '¿Hablas español?'

  Oh well. I was still exhausted from the previous day's journey so I abandoned any vague hope that I might have had of developing a rapport and sprawled out on my bed. The thought entered my head that I should probably stay awake in case my new cellmate rifled through my pockets whilst I was asleep, but I had nothing worth stealing so I figured she could search away until her heart's content. I was so tired that she could have probably stolen my left arm without disturbing my sleep.

  I woke up the next morning feeling freezing cold and soaking wet from head to toe. The cell had a damp mist in it that had coated everything in a fine layer of condensation. I hoped that it was water, not evaporated junkie sweat. My heart was beating ninety to the dozen and for some reason I felt more anxious than I had done at any point since entering the jail. I knew that this would be the day I had to go out onto the wing and hoped to God that Jeff was right about there being other English girls there. If it was just a load of druggie Spanish girls and me, then I had a feeling that I was going to be spending a lot of time on my own.

  Sure enough, shortly after I had finished my morning shower, a guard in came to tell us that it was time for association. This was the moment of reckoning; I was about to enter a world of muggers, thieves and murderers. I nervously edged my way out of the doorway and scanned the wing for anybody who looked likely to be English. I saw a lot of South Americans and Eastern Europeans, but all of the other girls apart from them were definitely Spanish. I was on the verge of having a panic attack when I heard a broad Northern accent and turned around to see a group of seven pale-skinned British girls chatting away in English.

  'Thank heavens for that,' I thought to myself.

  'Excuse me,' I approached the nearest Brit, who happened to be the Northern one.

  'You lot are from England, aren't you?'

  I wanted to make doubly sure, just in case my mind was playing tricks on me.

  'Yeah of course,' she told me. 'Are you the new girl? Adriana told us you'd be landing on the wing.'

  'Yeah I am,' I said, 'but who on earth is Adriana?'

  'She was on the bus with you on the way here – mafia girl, quite smartly dressed. We got a message from her that an English girl had come here with her. She told us to look after you and make sure you're all right.'

  Wow. I had known the hard-looking girl from the bus was somebody with a bit of clout but had no idea that she was Soto's answer to Tony Soprano. It was nice of her to put in a good word for me. Maybe things weren't going to be so bad in this place after all.

  'Everybody helps their own here,' the Northerner explained to me. 'Adriana wanted to make sure that you got in with the

  Brits. She said you looked as if it was your first time behind bars. Stick with us lot and you'll be OK.'

  The other girls seemed equally friendly and kept asking me if there was anything that I needed. I got the sense that the English cons all banded together for protection because they were so badly outnumbered by the other nationalities. I soon learnt that the Northern girl was called Karen and that she had been caught with a massive stash of guns and drugs. She was definitely no angel, but treated me with respect so I tried not to think about her crime.

  'What's your cellmate like then?' she asked me. 'Do you get on OK with her?'

  'She can't speak a word of English,' I told her. 'We've hardly spoken since I moved in with her.'

  'Well that doesn't sound too good. Stella here is on her own at the moment. I could ask the screws to move you in with her if you want?' she suggested, pointing to the girl standing next to her.

  'Yes please, that would be brilliant,' I told her. 'Otherwise I'm going to be sitting in the corner every night, wishing I could talk Spanish.'

  Karen grabbed a passing guard, gibbered something to him in Spanish and then gave me the thumbs up.

  'Sorted. Get your stuff, you're moving.'

  I wondered if the other inmates would be as helpful as the English girls had been. Karen and her little crew couldn't have been nicer to me if they had tried. As I transferred my things across from one cell to another, I glanced over one last time at the Spanish junkie and breathed a sigh of relief that I wasn't going to have to spend another night with her. She looked like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings.

  Stella seemed glad of the company. She was in for forgery, which I didn't see as being too bad a crime, and came across as kind and good-hearted. I still took people at face value. This would prove to be a big mistake because in prison, nobody is what they seem to be. The girls who come across as being the friendliest can often turn out to be the biggest nutters going.

  I relied upon Stella to get the low-down on the way the prison worked.

  'The main groups in here are the South Americans who are mostly drug mules and fraudsters, the Eastern Europeans who are mostly pickpockets, the ETA girls and the other Spanish girls,' she explained to me during our first night in the cell together. 'ETA is like the Spanish version of the IRA. They think that an area of Spain called the Basque Country should be a separate country. Most of the girls are only in for helping their boyfriends though, they aren't proper terrorists. The other Spaniards are nearly all junkies and aren't too fond of the English. They're probably a bit pissed off because there's so many of us over here.'

  'Is there anybody that I need to be wary of then?' I asked her.

  'Yeah the guards,' she laughed. 'Get on the wrong side of them and you'll really know about it. The staff here aren't like the ones you get in English prisons. They don't give a shit if you live or die, especially if you're foreign.'

  'I gathered that from when I went to see the doctor,' I told her. 'I told him I was having trouble sleeping and that I needed something for my nerves and he completely ignored me.'

  'You want to ask a guard to sort you out another appointment next time we're let out,' she advised me. 'I wouldn't bank on getting anything though. The health care here is awful, especially if you aren't Spanish. As far as they're concerned, we're just a burden on them. The key is persistence though. You need to pester them until it's easier for them to give you what you want.'

  Stella and I chatted for a couple more minutes and then a guard came to our door to let us know that we were allowed out for association. This was my chance to try and get some medication sorted.

  'Excuse me, do you know if it would be possible to see a doctor?' I asked him, being as polite as possible in the hope that it would increase the chance of him co-operating.

  'No entiendo.'

  I was sure that he had at least understood the word 'doctor'.

  'Doctor,' I repeated, 'I need to see a doctor.'

  He eventually got bored of pretending that he didn't know what I was asking him and promised to book me an appointment. I felt annoyed that he had used the whole 'I no speak English' routine on me to try and get out of bothering. For all he knew, I could have been seriously ill. If I was diabetic or had chronic asthma then his reluctance to help me could have been life-threatening. Even criminals deserve access to healthcare when they're sick.

  I was called for my appointment over the prison loudspeaker system later on that day whilst I was standing in the queue for dinner. By this stage my head was killing me so I prayed that I would be able to get some painkillers. This time it was just me and the doctor. Jeff wasn't there to help me out, which meant I had to communicate as best I could without being able to speak a word of Spanish.

  After five minutes of watching me pointing at my head and screwing up my face to indicate that I was in a lot of pain, the doctor eventually handed me some paracetamol-based headache pills. It was nice of him to issue me with medication that I had specifically told him I was allergic to.

  'I can't take these,' I told him. 'No paracetamol. I am allergic.'

  '¿Qué? Tome estos analgésicos.'

  'No paracetamol. I can't take p
aracetamol.'

  ¿Qué? ¡Tome las píldoras!'

  I carried on repeating myself until he put the pills back in his drawer and handed me another packet of tablets. There were no instructions with them so I didn't have a clue what they were or how many of them to take. This looked as if it was the best that I was going to get though so I thanked him for his help and asked if he could give me anything to help me get to sleep at night.

  '¿Qué?'

  'Insomnia. I need something for insomnia.'