Armoured Vehicle

As the Non-Intervention Agreement made it difficult to acquire military equipment, the Republic began to adapt existing businesses and workshops to convert them into war industries that produced munitions, arms, and all kinds of armoured vehicles. In Valencia, this Project made use of the region’s powerful metallurgical industry, one of the most important in Republican territory, especially after the fall of the north in 1937. 

The shipyards in the port were one of those industrial facilities. The Unión Naval del Levante Factory which opened in 1924 was one of them. During the Civil War, some 1,300 workers were employed there.  Collectivized by the UGT and CNT unions, it was later nationalized by the government, which turned into Factory #22 under the control of the Commissariat of Arms and Munitions. During the first months of the conflict, the workers built a number of prototypes of armoured vehicles that were used by militia units like the Iron Column and the Uribarri Column when they went to the front. 

The version shown in the photograph was  one of some 130 built at Factory #22 between January 1937 and June 1938. The ambitious Project was led by the Russian engineer Nicolai Akimov in collaboration with Spanish technicians. Designated the UNL-35, it was an improved version of the Soviet BA-20M that used armoured sheeting made at the Compañía Siderometalúrgica del Mediterráneo in Sagunto. The UNL-35 carried a crew of three: the commander in the tower, the driver and a machine gunner. It weighed 434 kilos and had a top speed of 60 kilometres per hour and a range of 230 kilometres. The wheels were filled with rubber so it could travel across country. This vehicle significantly qualifies the myth that the government of the Republic’s lack or organization and incompetence in the field of industry. 

At the end of the war, the UNL-35s were driven to the border where they were confiscated by the French authorities. Some fell into rebel hands and others were used by the French police before being returned under the terms of an agreement between the French and Spanish governments. Factory #22 was bombed so heavily that its facilities were almost completely destroyed and reduced to rubble, evidence of the virulence of the Italian air force based in Mallorca. Production moved from Valencia to Elda, in the province of Alicante.