The air raid shelter of the Sagrera tower does not have an assigned number because it was not included in the census of the city’s Passive Defense Board. Although it was known through the testimony of neighbors, its discovery was a complete surprise and even more so the good state of conservation in which it was found. As if time had stopped for almost 80 years. The shelter was closed after the Civil War and after decades it was rediscovered intact in 2014 during the rehabilitation and expansion works of the building, an old neoclassical tower built between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, converted today in a neighborhood center with community management of which seven entities are part.
The shelter is accessed from the basement after going down some steps. Located about ten meters deep, construction began taking advantage of a cooler, a storage point for food and liquid, which would be a natural refrigerator. The underground structure was not completely finished although it is 88 meters long, made up of four galleries. It even preserves part of the original electrical installation, with two light bulbs from the time, as well as three latrines, benches, ventilation shafts and the remains of an old fountain. Soon this space will be able to be visited after the City Council has carried out some works, conservation work and turned it into a museum in collaboration with the Sant Andreu district, Bimsa and the Archeology Service.
One of the interventions has consisted of making this place safe to open to the public. “It was essential to guarantee structural stability and a concrete slab has been created that stabilizes and collects the lateral loads of the shelter, which is very well built,” details Gonzalo Puelles, construction technician for the Sant Andreu district. In this sense, a flooring with a color similar to the original floor has been chosen. “More than restoration we have done conservation so that the space has durability over time, but the intervention has been minimal,” adds Anna Lázaro, head of restoration at the Barcelona Archeology Service. Lázaro also points out that monitoring has been carried out climatology for a year to study the problems from an environmental point of view when these spaces are reopened after so many years closed.
Once the last works have been completed, the management of the visits will be put out to tender, which will be guided and in small groups of five people with prior reservation. The municipal forecast is that the space can be opened to the public by the end of spring.
In addition to placing some information panels about the history of the bombings and the shelter itself before the entrance, at one point inside some cans and glass bottles that were found when the shelter was accessed have been recreated. On the walls you can even see drawings of houses and alphabet letters written by the children and some numerical notations used to build the shelter. There are also remains of burns from the fire of the oil lamps. With dim lighting and to get the idea of ??how distressing it was to access this place when the air raid sirens sounded, you can hear the bombings in the background with people’s screams and the crying of boys and girls.
The shelter of the Sagrera tower will join others that can be visited today in the city such as the 307 of Muhba de Poble Sec, the one of the cultural and sports society La lira de Sant Andreu or those of Gràcia, in Plaza del Diamant and that of the Revolution.
To protect citizens from bombings, more than 1,300 air raid shelters were built. It is estimated that the one in the Sagrera tower had a capacity for a hundred people. The Collectivized Workers Society of Berenguer Street in Palou was the one who requested the construction of the shelter in the summer of 1937. “In 1936, when the Civil War began, the City Council expropriated the tower to convert it into a school, but it never functioned as such because that same year the existing factory of American origin, the United Shoe Machinery, was collectivized and the tower became at the company’s government headquarters,” explains archaeologist Xavier Maese from the Barcelona Archeology Service. The Sagrera neighborhood and the Sant Andreu district in general was an area of ??Barcelona that suffered bombings when many factories were located, such as Hispano Switzerland, where weapons were manufactured.
“The air raid shelters are a hidden heritage, although very important because it was the citizens themselves who built them,” highlights Maese. The citizen response to defend themselves from the ferocious fascist attacks even aroused the admiration of other countries and was taken as a reference. For history, Winston Churchill’s phrase remains in one of his speeches: “In no case would I want to underestimate the severity of the ordeal that awaits us, but I believe that our people will prove capable of resisting it as the brave men of Barcelona have done.” .
