4 . Shelter on the street Carrer Toledo © Ana Sánchez 5 . Shelter in the passage Passatge Simó © Ana Sánchez
the Palau de les Heures , or Juan Negrín , in the garden of the Pedralbes estate lent to the head of the government of the Second Republic by the Roviralta family , demonstrate the efforts made to maintain institutional life amidst the bombs . This section includes the bunker located under the house of Doctor Andreu on Avinguda Tibidabo , an initiative of the Soviet consul Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko ( one of the heroes of the October Revolution ), the Generalitat Government of Catalonia ’ s shelter and the Escola Popular de Guerra ( People ’ s War School ) shelter , in the building of the school Escoles Pies de Sarrià .
Spaces used as shelters
Stations on the underground network or the Sarrià urban and suburban train station were used as shelters . These underground facilities were estimated to be able to hold 200,000 or 300,000 people , i . e . 30 % of the population of a city with a population of one million at the time . While initially undeniably of great use , they would prove to be insufficient , and the image associated with the bomb shelters in Barcelona , unlike that which has remained of the underground in cities such as London , would be the large-scale construction of shelters .
International Conference : Shelters . Citizens , Memory and Subsoil in Europe
On 16 and 17 March , coinciding with the 85th anniversary of the March 1938 bombing of the Catalan capital , the international conference Shelters . Citizens , Memory and Subsoil in Europe , organised by Barcelona City Council and the UB Solidarity Foundation ’ s European Observatory on Memories ( EUROM ), explored the Catalan experience in relation to that of other European capitals during the Second World War . The historian Keith Lowe , a renowned Second World War expert , the Frenchman Gilles Thomas , an expert on the subsoil of Paris , and the archaeologists Gabriel Moshenska and Carme Miró were among the roughly twenty experts and civil society representatives who analysed the memorialisation of these spaces , their current uses and the narratives that shape their memory today .
Exhibition catalogue
1.322 : Una mirada fotogràfica als refugis antiaeris de Barcelona [ 1,322 : A Photographic Overview of Barcelona ’ s Air-Raid Shelters ]. Barcelona City Council , 2023
The exhibition at La Model also included some fifty objects found in the archaeological work carried out in different shelters , which provide an insight into life amidst the bombs .
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