The entrance to the concentration camp of the Portuguese dictatorship brings "bad memories" to Gil Varela, almost 89 years old, imprisoned there for having fought for the freedom and independence of Cape Verde. "Good memories were when we left here and saw a new country grow," adds António Pedro da Rosa, 75 years old, another political prisoner, who stayed until the day of liberation, on May 1, 1974. "We were in the cell when we heard joy, many people shouting that they were coming to free the prisoners, many people with cars to take us to Praia," the capital city, he recalls. The prisoners participated in several popular rallies, before being taken to their respective homes, where women and children had been waiting for too long. The solidarity among the prisoners still stands out today from the testimonies of Gil and António, who with Lusa visited the camp - today the Museum of Resistance -, talking about the most vivid memories, among all those that have been published in paper and on the Internet. Gil Varela, "Kid", was held in preventive detention during 1970, in a group immediately thrown into disciplinary cells, so dark that he even complained to the director, the Cape Verdean colonial official Eduardo Fontes: "He said that the dark was good for the eyes" and that he wanted to "re-educate" them. They only spent half an hour outside the cell in the morning, another half in the afternoon and when night fell what he felt most, on the outside, was heat, an unbearable heat, on the inside "it was revolt", says Gil. "We were there for reintegration into society", not the one we dreamed of, but the one imposed, "the best for the overseas provinces", without freedoms, recalls Luís Fonseca, former Cape Verdean ambassador, executive secretary of the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries (CPLP) between 2004 and 2008, who will speak as a spokesman for political prisoners at the ceremony of the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Tarrafal next Wednesday. "We had committed a serious crime of treason against the homeland" by supporting different "terrorist" activities of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) and the destination was "a space with the minimum to survive". After being attacked by the PIDE in other dungeons, Luis Fonseca joined the first group of Cape Verdean political prisoners to arrive in Tarrafal (1970-1973) and who organized themselves to support the studies of new detainees, such as António da Rosa, who several times refers to the space as a "school". It was this first group that supported and helped to endure Tarrafal, describes António, one of the detainees in the Pérola do Oceano case, the boat they tried to divert to the west coast of Africa where the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) was located. Gil Varela, who would later be cleared for lack of evidence after being imprisoned in Tarrafal, recalls the conversations and the conviviality with the other prisoners as a kind of lifeline, the true "food" that kept him alive. Today, the stage of this camaraderie, the common cell of the Cape Verdeans, is one of the rooms of the Museum of Resistance with panels that tell the story, with a film on a screen and photos of the prisoners, like them, isolated from the world. "Once we refused to eat a meal" with spoiled food, a refusal that was another sign of unity, but which was worth the "punishment" of a month without visits, recalls António. But the most feared punishment, the Holandinha, a tiny cell, with no space to lie down, no height to stand up, only with bread and water, a can for the needs and tiny bars to let the air pass through -- heir to the 'frying pan', a cell from the first phase of the camp, cruelly exposed to the sun. Gil and António never ended up there, but they saw other prisoners punished there when the authority judged that it was being challenged, which could happen even unintentionally. A guard once pointed a gun at António da Rosa, on an occasion when he approached a guardhouse, inadvertently, during a walk. "I went to my colleagues, told them and everyone left. We went back together to the same place to see if he would do the same thing, but he turned his back on us", a moment etched in António's memory, because "it was the demonstration that no one was afraid".  Cape Verdean prisoners could not be together with Angolans, but they saw each other from afar and with their fingers made "the V for victory" or whistled melodies of the revolution, without the guards noticing, but which were signs of hope in the struggle that was being fought. The presidents of Cape Verde, José Maria Neves, Angola, João Lourenço, Guinea-Bissau, Umaro Sissoco Embaló, and Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the four countries of origin of the prisoners, will celebrate on Wednesday, May 1, the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Tarrafal -- a memorial plaque on the site marks the names of the 36 people who died in the concentration camp by the Portuguese colonial dictatorship. The majority, 32 dead, were Portuguese who opposed the fascist regime, imprisoned in the first phase of the camp, between 1936 and 1956. The camp reopened in 1962 to incarcerate anti-colonialists from Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde -- two Angolans and two Guineans died. In all, more than 500 people were imprisoned in the "slow death camp", a symbol of the violence and oppression of the colonial regime that fell on April 25, 1974. Read Also: April 25. Anniversary celebrated in London with joy and emotion (Portuguese version)