REVIEW
Temporary Exhibition
Air-raid shelters in Barcelona , the legacy of
underground resistance
Ana Sánchez Journalist and photographer , specialising in cultural communication and historical memory
From 30 March to 30 July , galleries 3 and 4 in the former La Model prison played host to the photography exhibition . It is the product of a research study that made it possible to portray , for the first time from an artistic perspective , forty of the shelters listed during the Spanish Civil War in the Catalan capital . If the damaged buildings and scars of the last war that the city lived through still remain visible above ground in Barcelona , an extraordinary testament to solidarity and resistance survives today below ground , which has been documented by the photographer Ana Sánchez and the historian Xavier Domènech .
The systematic bombing of Barcelona made the rearguard a battlefield for the first time and it became a testing ground on the brink of the Second World War . But while the city was offered to Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany as a site for experimenting with the technology of destruction , its citizens took centre stage in a remarkable show of collective resistance : the construction of a pioneering underground defence network for the whole city . The 1,322 listed shelters comprise a civic , historical and architectural heritage that is unique in Europe , although in the city ’ s imaginary it is still vague and kept quiet , with piecemeal and deliberately blurred documentation in the collective memory .
In this context , photography is a tool to bring them into the present , a way of rekindling the light beneath the ground . Today , these spaces retain an astonishing beauty that exudes the full power of the past . The photographs capture this strength with a distinct Baroque light , warm and defined , and with a temperature akin to that of incandescence . The lighting is low-key , which is respectful of the chiaroscuros and half-lights and shows a clear orientation , to generate volume and depth through contrast . These images also show the
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Observing Memories Issue 7