The highlight of Saturday was the opportunity to physically step into the world that became all too familiar to those people who suffered through the Barcelona city bombings that occurred from 1937 to 1939. These bombings were a trial run for the terror that would reign down on London during WWII. The city government in Barcelona saw the need to build underground refuges for its citizens as the small sections of metro tunnels were not enough to shelter the entire city population.
Due to the short warning time before each bombing (often less than 10 minutes as the German planes were able to fly in unhindered from the island of Mallorca and weren’t spotted until they were close to the coastline) shelters were built in each neighborhood. These underground tunnel systems had to be hand chiseled out of the mountainside as the more efficient dynamite was reserved for use on the front lines.
Refugio 307 has been restored and open to the public as a museum for under a year. We had an excellent tour guide that led us through the underground labyrinth that surely saved the lives of thousands during the bombing raids. She related to us the system of hearing the sirens sound all over the city and then the people would flee to the underground safe houses. They couldn’t bring anything with them and would sometimes were stuck there for up to two hours as they waited for the all clear signal.
The system for entry and exit to the facility was very controlled and orderly as they could expect hundreds of people to be there at a time. There was a makeshift medical facility and children’s area to make sure everyone was well taken care of while underground. It was moving to be in Refugio 307 and imagine how the people must have felt as they hid in the cramped, damp space clinging to the hope that life would one day return to normal. The extremely informative tour ended with a plea from the tour guide that this type of civilian destruction happen ‘Nunca Mas en Ningun Sitio’.
Spanish Civil War 
