Whereas the two miners loaded wagons and did seven hellish trips on pyrite or copper tunnels, the other prisoner prepared the bodies to reinforce the whole dug area once it had been emptied. This area would be entirely reinforced on the sides and ceiling of the tunnel with wooden bodies, which were torn up and shaped in such a way to be fitted with one another. This wooden reinforcement secured the tunnel up to a point to avoid collapse and provide for further digging.

Spaç Prison Camp had an infirmary with eight beds. This infirmary was designed to meet all of the camp’s health needs. But referring to some periods of high intake of patients (wounded in accidents, with a cold, poisoning from food or underground gases in tunnels, chronic diseases or many other health concerns), the infirmary didn’t meet even the most minimal needs of prisoners.

In the pyrite area the daily rate for each working group was seven wagons. As such, the two carters of the group had to fill seven wagons of mineral.  According to former prisoner Shkëlqim Abazi’s testimony, a wagon would take around 200 shovels of pyrite to fill. A shovelful of pyrite weighed from 18 to 25 kg. According to an average number, one wagon had around 3,600 kg of pyrite.  This estimate would mean that the two carters had to fill seven wagons, or 25,200 kg of mineral per shift, or 12,600 kg of mineral each.  Imagine the daily routine for this enslaving work where one man had to load 12,600 kg of mineral every day!

Beyond the grueling process of this mineral’s extraction, pyrite tunnels were far more dangerous than copper ones. The terrain was highly unstable due to the mineral’s acid sand-like composition, therefore collapses in pyrite tunnels were quite often. Furthermore, the acid environment made work all the harder. Acid drops that dripped ceaselessly in the tunnel not only eroded and burnt the prisoner’s unprotected skin; they also eroded and destroyed the rails on which prisoners had to push their wagons. This added on to the exhausting work: as the wagons had to be pushed for around one kilometer and the same distance back.

In Spaç, there was poor quality food with no standards whatsoever.According to archival records and several testimonies collected among former prisoners, the food diet has changed frequently.Most of the time of its operation, however, daily quotas for prisoners working in Spaç’s mines were these:900 grams of bread per day.Breakfast included soup with seasonal vegetables, and sometimes a little meat.  Lunch was soup and a ladleful of pasta or rice with some meat.The standard was 40 grams of meat, but they were almost never provided with as much.Dinner was tea and 20 grams of feta cheese or, if there was no feta, 10 grams of typical yellow cheese and, in times of crisis, apple or fig marmalade.The first shift had the most normal food diet, whereas the two other shifts had tea for breakfast, soup for lunch and soup and rice or pasta for dinner.  This was adapted to their times of leaving for work and returning to the camp.Some archival documents, as well as many testimonies of former prisoners, record frequent food poisonings of prisoners.In a report dated 27th August 1979, prison command had complained for the poisoning of 150 prisoners.The most common symptoms were stomachaches and nausea.

After wagons were manually loaded, they were also pushed by hands for a distance of one kilometer to the exit of the tunnel on large heaps that were then transported through a mechanism on trucks. The prisoner returned to the work front with an empty wagon or wooden bodies with which he fortified the area of explosion, after all of the material was extracted.  The routine of description of this road with the wagon full of mineral and return to the front was done seven times per shift.