As a form of torture, especially in the cold winter days when temperatures hit subzero temperatures, police officers poured water in the isolation cells. As such, prisoners punished in the cells had to go through not only the cold, but also exhaustion and insomnia, as they could not sit or sleep.

In the first years of the camp’s operation, in the years 1968-1971, there were four sleeping areas in Spaç, which were one-story barracks made of mixed concrete.Later in the camp, three-story sleeping areas were built, where every room housed 35 to 50 prisoners.Their number depended on the intake of arrests and political convictions pronounced by the regime. The sleeping areas’ routine was almost the same.That’s where prisoners passed most of their time after eight hours of exhausting work in Spaç’s mines.  Sleeping and waking hours were closely related to the three-shift timetable applied for work in the mine.

There was one room where the prisoners slept, particularly after going from one-story barracks to three-story ones, as the sketch indicates, which was full of these bunk beds connected to one another mainly in a U shape and equipped with wooden stairs to climb to the upper bed.Prisoners shared their common space with no separation between mattresses and when the number of prisoners increased, everybody had even less space to give room to the newcomers.

In the sleeping areas, prisoners secretly distributed Albanian translated works, which were not allowed by camp command. They were copied and re-copied and prisoners circulated them to be read by everyone. Convicted writers and poets also circulated their poems. Often police officers in the camp did detailed checks and if they were caught, these were cause for re-conviction. That was why manuscripts were often hidden in the mine, in different places like airing pipes or special spots created by prisoners themselves in the tunnels’ wooden reinforcement structure.

Those who didn’t meet the target were often tied to a column at the tunnels’ exit and left there tied all night or day until the end of the shift. The torture was severely more excruciating during extreme frosts.

Only one pair of cotton twill pants, one shirt and one summer jacket were allowed in the cell. Late at night, isolated prisoners were provided with only one old blanket that was taken away in the morning. The light clothes and a thin and torn blanket were all they had to go through the extreme cold in subzero temperatures.