Londres 38, memorial site

The neighbourhood around you, with its curving cobbled streets and European-style houses, was built in the 1920s over the orchards of the San Francisco convent. It looks like a film set, but what happened in this house is no legend.

1The Yucatán barracks

Londres 38 was a local office of the Socialist Party. After the military coup of September 1973, the DINA, the secret police of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship, turned it into a clandestine detention and torture centre, code-named Yucatán. It operated until the end of 1974.

It is estimated that around 1,100 people passed through here. Nearly a hundred of them were executed or remain disappeared; most were young. The prisoners, blindfolded, called the place the House of the Bells, because they could hear the bells of a nearby church ringing without knowing which one. They were those of San Francisco, the previous stop.

2Reclaiming the house

Later, the street number was changed from 38 to 40, as if the place were meant to vanish. Groups of relatives and survivors managed to have it declared a Historic Monument in 2005, and in 2008 it passed to the state. Today it is a memorial site open to the public.

This stop is not about ghosts: it is about people with names and surnames. Their names are on the ground beneath your feet.

3What to look for

• The pavement tiles, bearing the names of the victims.
• The facade of the house, with its tall windows and grilles, just like so many others in the neighbourhood.
• The nearby tower of San Francisco, whose bells the prisoners heard.