The experience of Valencia was unique and short-lived. A commendable effort was made to extend the principles on which Montesinos had acted, and decrees embodying them and recommending them for general adoption were issued but soon became a dead letter. Excellent in theory, their success depended entirely on the man to give them effect. A second Montesinos did not appear and Spanish prisons continued to exhibit the worst features down to the present day. A movement towards prison reform had been commenced as early as 1844, when three new "model" prisons were planned for Madrid, but their construction was long delayed. About the same date a model convict prison was planned at Valladolid, but slow progress was made with this and with other new prisons, including that of Saragossa, and at the Casa de Galera of Alcalá de Henares. A penitentiary was also projected on the island of Cabrera, opposite Cadiz. The chief effort was concentrated on the model prison of Madrid, which was undertaken in 1876 after much debate and discussion. It was to be an entirely new building, to which were devoted all the funds that might have been expended upon the impossible reform and repair of the hideous old Saladero. Several years passed before the building began, and not until 1884 did the tenants of the dismantled Saladero move into the new prison. It is for the most part on the cellular or separate system, by which each individual is held strictly apart from his fellows, according to the most modern ideas, which have claimed to have exerted a potent effect in the reformation of offenders and the diminution of crime. Nevertheless the system is still in its trial and its beneficial results are by no means universally conceded. The new prison is a very distinct improvement on the old, and the former horrors and atrocities are fast disappearing, but the secluded solitary life has its own peculiar terrors which press hardly on transgressors, with results that are very distinctly deterrent if not very largely reformatory. What those actually subjected to the treatment feel we may read in their own effusions. The literary quality of prison writers does not rank high but they sometimes put their views forcibly. One says of the "model":--"If I leave this trying place alive I can at least declare that I have been buried underground and had made the acquaintance of the grave diggers." Another writer:--"If you wish to know what life is like here, come and take your lodging inside. They are handsome, but curious, well provided with means to drive you out of your mind. There is a water tap which overflows in drought and runs dry in wet weather; a pocket handkerchief and a towel; a plate, a basin and a wooden spoon, a broom, a dust box, one blanket and a mattress with four straws that gives you pain in every limb: many things more, but one alone much needed is absent, a rope by which you commit suicide."