The first phase lasted from 1936 to 1954. On October 29, 1936, the first 157 Portuguese political prisoners arrived from Lisbon, antifascists, 37 of them being strikers participating in the strike of January 18, 1934, in Marinha Grande, and some participants in the Sailors' Revolt of 1936, organized by the Revolutionary Organization of the Navy, linked to the Portuguese Communist Party. In the beginning, the facilities were simple canvas tents with the capacity to house twelve prisoners, without any conditions, and the camp was circumscribed by barbed wire and a four-meter deep ditch. There was no electricity, ventilation or wind/rain protection. According to the prisoners, due to the unpredictably rainy weather of the location, sometimes the tents would flood and rot. The wooden buildings were reserved for the secretariat and the warehouse. This was done concurrently with the construction of the sheds. Electricity, air renewal, and protection against the natural elements, especially the sun - which is "unbearable due to the country's climatic conditions" - were non-existent. According to Cândido de Oliveira, the barbed wire barred any direct contact with the outside, although it still allowed visual contact. Manuel Franscico Rodrigues affirms that the construction of slopes benefited the guards, restricted space, and increased the psychological torture on the prisoners. The only stone building was the kitchen, which was partially built. Manuel dos Reis, director of the camp for several years, would receive the political prisoners saying "Whoever comes to Tarrafal comes to die!". According to the Commission of the Black Book on the Fascist Regime, the prison records of some prisoners sent to Tarrafal have not been found, saying that on examining the existing records, "it soon appears that many of them were not even tried and that others, despite having been sentenced, were not sentenced to imprisonment". In 1944, of the 226 prisoners imprisoned there, 72 had not been tried and 55 had already exceeded their sentences. The first two years in prison were divided into two phases: in the first, called the "wild brigade", the prisoners were subjected to forced labor for 45 days, under extremely high temperatures, to build the walls of the concentration camp, the road, among others. The second, called the "acute period", which began in 1937, was when the first diseases began to appear - such as malaria, bilious and other infectious diseases - and during this period seven prisoners died. In 1937