Barcelona: The City of Air Raid Shelters

Over the last few years, the Barcelona Archeological Service (ICUB) has conducted research into a key element of the patrimony of the Spanish Civil War: air raid shelters. This website brings together all the information, documentation, images, and testimonies that we have collected during this time and shows that a real underground city was built when the rearguard became a front line and the civilian population was bombarded in their homes, in the street, in the markets, in the schools…

Visitors to the site can enter an interactive map on which more than 1,361 of Barcelona’s air raid shelters have been geo-localized and consult all the information gathered by our archeological activities as well as the documents and historic maps found in the archives. This tool for managing this Civil War patrimony and presenting it to the public makes it possible to know the most human aspects of this part of our history as well as its archeology. A number of the air raid shelters can be visited virtually through detailed 3D models.

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