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

by Terry Daniels

  'No. Usted no puede tener nada.'

  I understood the word 'no' but had no idea what his reason for refusal was. He was seemingly willing to prescribe me pills that had the potential to make me seriously ill but not to give me sleepers. There was no point kicking up a fuss though because he probably wouldn't have even understood what I was saying if I did, so I thanked him for his time and headed back to the wing.

  By the time I got to the canteen, dinner had finished and everybody was being locked up in their cells. I was going to have to go hungry for the night, which wasn't really all that bad a thing because the food was disgusting. I opened up the door to my cell and almost tripped over Stella, who was kneeling prostrate on a rug with a piece of cloth tied round her head whilst chanting loudly to herself in Arabic.

  'Subhana Rabbi al-A' la…'

  'What on earth are you doing?' I asked her, trying to stifle a giggle.

  She looked absolutely ridiculous.

  'Shh!' she told me, 'I'm praying. I converted to Islam a while back so I do this a couple of times a day.'

  I had seen her eating a big slab of ham when I first came into the prison; what was the point in her being a Muslim if she was going to follow certain parts of the religion but wilfully ignore others? The girl in the cell next door was a proper Muslim from Morocco and the contrast couldn't have been greater. Stella didn't know the first thing about Islam. She was just one of those girls who embrace religion the minute they get locked up because they've got too much time on their hands. Still, if it prevented her from getting bored then at least that was something. I sprawled out on the bed and let her get on with it, immersing myself in my thoughts and attempting to blot out her crazy wailing to the best of my ability.

  I mentioned Stella's spiritual awakening to Karen during the following day's association and was told that she had originally started claiming to be a Muslim because Islamic prisoners were given a special feast at the end of Ramadan.

  'She just wanted some more food at first but now she's really into it,' Karen smiled. 'That girl's a little bit on the nutty side though. She's hooked on painkillers and does a lot of crazy stuff. Mind you, most people in here have their vices.'

  The majority of people behind bars are addicted to one thing or another so I figured painkillers were a fairly harmless craving. I had been addicted to coke then booze then speed so it would have been hypocritical of me to pass judgement on her. What I didn't realise was that her addiction had reached its upper limits. She would do whatever it took to get a fix, even if it meant hurting other people.

  I first became aware of the true extent of Stella's problem when we were locked away behind the door just under a week after I had moved in with her. She started off by pacing around the room, looking extremely agitated, then came straight out with it and asked me if I had any painkillers. I told her no because I needed them for my headaches and she went absolutely ballistic.

  'I know you've got some,' she snarled at me. 'You'd better give me one or you and me are going to have a major falling out.'

  'I would if I had any spare,' I attempted to placate her, knowing full well that she would bully me out of every pack I got if I gave in to her. 'You'd be better off seeing the doctor and getting some of your own.'

  Stella's face went beetroot red and she balled her hand into a fist.

  'Cellmates are meant to share. You'd better give me one.'

  I was just about to tell her no again when she lunged forward and gave me an almighty crack to the side of the face. I stood there rooted to the spot in stunned silence, unable to believe that she had actually hit me over a headache pill. It wasn't as if I had been deliberately awkward; I genuinely needed every last tablet for the pain. As soon as the reality of what had happened sunk in, I burst into tears. Maybe the other inmates could handle being punched for no apparent reason but I wasn't used to violence and felt very scared and upset. I might have mixed with petty criminals in the outside world but none of them had ever been particularly aggressive towards me. This was a worrying reminder that I was now living in a place where disputes were settled using fists.

  Stella remained completely unrepentant and sat on her bed sulking, looking as if she was waiting for the slightest provocation so that she could go nuts again. Luckily a guard opened up the cell for association a couple of minutes later and saved me from a second attack.

  'I need to get out of here,' I told him, tears streaming down my face.

  I knew that there would be drastic consequences if I grassed Stella up for attacking me so I made out that we had had a blazing argument. The guard agreed to put me in with another English girl, which was a huge relief. My new cellmate was very sympathetic and told me that she wasn't at all surprised by what had happened because she knew exactly what Stella was like.

  'She's a ticking time bomb, that girl is,' she said. 'One minute she's all sweetness and light and the next thing she's throwing a wobbler. You'll be a lot better off in here with me. And don't worry, I don't want any of your aspirin. It's not really my thing.'

  I smiled and wiped the tears from my eyes. This lady had injured her leg and needed crutches to get about the place so even if she did turn out to be a nutter, she was still unlikely to pose much of a threat. Her name was Rochelle and she was inside because her husband had been caught smuggling drugs across from Holland. In Spain, the Guardia Civil will often nick the relatives of people who have committed a crime under the logic that anybody who was close to the guilty party must have been aware of what was going on. Sometimes whole families will be locked up because a single member has broken the law.

  Rochelle seemed as if she really was a top bird. She was very down to earth and sorted me out with fags, which was a lifesaver. This helped to cheer me up a bit and made me feel as if I could at least relax within the confines of my cell even if the rest of the prison was full of loonies. I was fortunate to be in with one of the few good eggs.

  Me and 'Chelle had a right laugh together. We had a similar sense of humour and the days passed quickly now that I didn't have to share a cell with somebody who spent the whole time kneeling on a rug and yelling, 'Allahu akbar'. I wouldn't have had any problem with Stella's prayer routine if she had been a proper Muslim, not somebody who spent all day praying to Allah and then tucked into a slab of pork at dinnertime.

  It was a good thing that I had Rochelle there to look after me because the British Consulate didn't show their faces until a week into my sentence. They had promised that they would send someone to see me straightaway and I had been relying on them to tell my mum which prison I was in. They kept me waiting for a week without so much as a phone call to the jail to let me know what was going on.

  On the day that a Consulate representative finally turned up to see me, I was escorted into one of the prison visiting rooms and told to take a seat in front of her. She was very apologetic for not turning up earlier and explained that she had only just found out which institution I was in from her employers.

  'I thought you'd been flown straight over to Gran Canaria to serve your sentence there,' she told me. 'If I had known that you were here, I would have driven to the prison straightaway. Your mother's been on the phone and I've let her know that you're in Soto. Fair Trials International rang us as well. They should be writing to you soon.'

  'Do you know if I'll get flown over to Gran Canaria then?' I asked her. 'Am I going to go to Salto del Negro, where I was locked up when they first arrested me?'

  'I'm sorry, I can't tell you that,' she said. 'I can't give you any information about which prison you'll be moved on to. That's not what I'm here for; my job is to make sure you're OK and that you're getting treated properly.

  'Well I do have one concern about things here,' I told her. 'I've recently had an aneurysm and I'm getting awful headaches. I've been to see the doctor but he doesn't seem bothered. The last time I went, I didn't even have a translator with me so he probably didn't have a clue what I was on about.'

  'That doesn't
sound too good,' the lady said, frowning. 'You're entitled to the same level of medical attention that the Spanish inmates get. I'll have a word with the prison staff and see if I can get them to buck up their ideas a bit.'

  'I have to borrow cigarettes because I haven't got any cash either,' I told her. 'Is there any chance that you could ring my mum and tell her to send some money in for me?'

  'Sure,' she said. 'That shouldn't be a problem. Once again I'm sorry for the delay. Good luck in here. If there's anything else you need then don't hesitate to contact me. Hopefully we'll be able to get somebody here a lot quicker next time.'

  I thanked her for her help and we both left the room. She was escorted out of the prison and I was ushered back to my cell.

  I didn't want to have to wait until Mum received the message and sent some money over to me before I got to speak to her. Calls were expensive though, and I had no cash on the phone card that they had issued me with when I came into the prison, so the only other alternative was to ask to borrow a card from one of the other inmates. Karen was always giving me coffee and cigarettes so I figured that she would be the best person to approach. She was all too happy to lend me hers.

  It was nice to hear Mum's voice again. She was trying to remain positive but I could tell that she was suffering just as much as I was.

  'Think of your time in Soto as being like a package holiday,' she told me. 'The food's crap and the accommodation's crap but you've just got to make the best of it.'

  That brought a smile to my face.

  'I should be visiting you this weekend,' she said. 'I could only manage to sort out a glass panel visit though.'

  There are three types of visit in Spanish prisons; family visits, conjugal visits and glass panel visits. Family visits take place in a private room with chairs and a toilet in it. The guards leave you completely unattended until your time is up, which gives some of the more drug-orientated inmates a chance to get things passed across to them. Conjugal visits are something that most inmates in British prisons would die for. They're visits where you're left alone with your visitor in a room with a double bed and a bath in it. The idea is that there will be less sexual attacks in the prison if the inmates are given the opportunity to have some 'quality time' with their partners every couple of weeks. Glass panel visits are the worst of the three types. Rather than having face-to-face contact, inmates are forced to speak to their visitors from behind a screen.

  The prison staff had been unable to sort a family visit out for the weekend at such short notice so a glass panel visit was going to have to do. I would have liked to have given Mum a hug when I saw her but it was still a damn sight better than phoning her from overseas. The visit wasn't the only good news that she had for me either; Fair Trials had rung to tell her that they were looking for a reputable Spanish lawyer and petitioning to have me released on grounds of ill health. They had highlighted the fact that the stressful conditions of life behind bars could trigger another aneurysm and argued that the only humane thing to do would be to set me free as soon as possible. They were right as well because although I had been stressed out by my drink and drug problem whilst in the outside world, it was nothing compared to the anguish of being separated from my family and friends. Some people might think that taking amphetamines every night was a lot more unhealthy than being locked up; but for me, doing whiz was a side effect of being told that I was facing time in prison. I had managed to get my addictions under control at one stage and they had only started up again when Interpol turned up to tell me that there was a strong possibility that I was going to get shipped off to Spain.

  'I hope it works,' I said to Mum. 'I'd love to talk to you for longer but I'm using somebody else's phone card so I'm going to have to get off now. I can't wait to see you this weekend. Love you.'

  'I love you too,' she told me. 'Take care in there and remember to stay safe. See you soon Terry.'

  I felt better for speaking to her. It reminded me that there were still people out there who cared about me even if the screws at Soto didn't give a toss. When I told the other English girls about our conversation, they were pleased that things were looking up but warned me that the Spaniards would be unlikely to allow me to walk free without a fight. The general consensus was that once you had been convicted it was very hard to get released from prison before the end of your stint.

  That night, I went to sleep feeling hopeful that I could still eventually be released. Soto was the type of environment where any medical condition that you had was likely to be amplified tenfold. The prison was a stressful, noisy, dirty place that could re-ignite my haemorrhage and put my life in danger. Fair enough, taking drugs and drinking had posed a high level of a risk when I was back in England, but I hadn't suffered from the crippling headaches that I was experiencing in Soto. They made me constantly on edge in case something was wrong.

  The fact that there was now a chance of being set free should have made me more relaxed but I awoke at 5 a.m. the following morning feeling as if my head was about to explode. It was throbbing unbearably and every now and again a shooting pain went through it. The minute the door was unlocked, I rushed over to the prison nurse to beg her for some aspirin. She was dishing out methadone to the heroin addicts at the time and didn't take too kindly to being disturbed.

  'No entiendo,' she shouted, along with some other things that didn't mean anything to me.

  By this stage I had learnt that 'no entiendo' meant 'I don't understand.' I had heard it repeated to me so many times by the guards that it would have been impossible for me not to pick it up. The word 'aspirin' is the same in Spanish as it is in English though so I knew that she was lying.

  'Aspirin,' I repeated. 'I need aspirin for my head.'

  'No entiendo el inglés!'

  I was the verge of going berserk and shouting my head off at her but somehow managed to restrain myself and walked back to my cell. So much for the lady from the Consulate having a word with the governor. The only thing that prevented me from breaking down and crying was the thought that I would be able to see my mum in a couple of days' time. The Spanish authorities had other plans though. I wasn't even going to be in the same prison by the time the weekend came.

  Chapter 17

  TOPAS

  This is a maximum-security prison. There are a lot of people on methadone. One girl is schizophrenic but there's no room for her on the medical wing. Let's just hope her medication is working. I'm not sure if the plastic knife that they have given me to eat with will be any good for self-defence!

  Diary entry from 16 November 2005

  I was chatting to Rochelle outside our cell when the announcement came.

  The prison tannoy system wasn't very clear but I could still make out my name. It sounded as if they were saying that I was being transferred to another jail. Surely I must have misheard the announcer though. They wouldn't ship me out before my visit, would they? If they did then it would mean that Mum would arrive at the prison only to be turned back at the gate because I was no longer there.

  'Tell me that didn't mean what I thought it meant,' I said to 'Chelle.

  'You're being sent to Topas,' she told me. 'You'll be setting off tomorrow. That's another rough old nick. You'll need your wits about you there.'

  This was the final straw. We were about to be banged up for the evening so there was no time to ring Mum and tell her not to come. I knew full well that the prison wouldn't try to contact her either. The thought of her turning up at the wrong jail made me so angry. What right did they have to mess her about like that? Tears welled up in my eyes and I felt my face go red with rage.

  'I can't believe they're doing this,' I cried. 'They're going to let Mum come all this way for nothing. It's going to be weeks before I see her now. What has my mum done to them? She's never broken a law in her life so why are they punishing her?'

  'Don't cry,' 'Chelle told me. 'It isn't your fault. They should have pushed it back a couple of days 'til after the visit. You're right it
isn't fair but I'm sure your mum will understand.'

  I appreciated her efforts but nothing she said could make me feel any better. I spent the next eight hours crying my eyes out on my bed. Rochelle was brilliant and did her best to comfort me but it was all to no avail. I carried on sobbing well into the night and by the time I nodded off, my bedding was sopping wet with tears. God knows what the guards must have thought when they woke me up for my transfer. It looked as if somebody had turned a sprinkler on in the cell.

  'I'm going to miss you,' 'Chelle told me as I was marched out of the door clutching a bin bag full of my belongings.

  'I'll miss you too,' I sniffled. 'I'll write to you and let you know how I get on.'

  It felt just as intimidating leaving Soto as it had done coming in. There were guards and coppers everywhere, patrolling the perimeter and reminding me what a dangerous place I had been living in. The screws handed me over to a Guardia Civil officer, who bundled me into the back of a prison bus and slammed the door shut. There was a mental-looking Romanian pickpocket in there, who was guaranteed to make my voyage all the more delightful. Her skin looked filthy and she kept twitching and fidgeting as if she was coming down from drugs.