When the Bombs Fell

I do not at all underrate the severity of the ordeal which lies before us; but I believe our countrymen will show themselves capable of standing up to it, like the brave men of Barcelona...

Winston Churchill in his “Finest Hour” speech to the British House of Commons on June 18, 1940

When Churchill spoke those words, he was referring to the imminent danger of bombing attacks on British cities by the German air force. He singled out Barcelona not only because it was an early victim of urbicide during the Spanish Civil War from 1936–1939, but also because the response of its citizens to this threat was proactive and practical.

At first, the war’s impact on Barcelona was largely characterized by food shortages, the arrival of refugees from elsewhere in Spain and the movement of soldiers to the front. All of this changed when Franco’s Fascist allies, Italy and Germany, began dropping bombs on the city through air raids. For them, Barcelona and other Spanish cities like Guernica presented an opportunity to test the strategy of attacking civilians, and the Italians even sent a plane equipped with a camera to document the results.

At that time, planes were still relatively new and when they flew overhead, people went out onto the streets to see what was happening, until they realized these planes were not engaging in friendly flight. That’s when the people of Barcelona took matters into their own hands.

Building Barcelona's Refugis Antiaeris

By constructing more than 1,300 underground public air raid shelters, refugis antiaeris, ordinary citizens saved thousands of lives. The Generalitat and city councils provided some funds and civil engineers provided the designs. One in particular, Ramón Perera, is now credited as the principal architect of Barcelona’s shelters. The actual building work, however, was left to women, children and the elderly in the neighborhood associations, as most of the men were already fighting in the war.

A trip to an air raid shelter, such as Refugi 307 in Poble-sec, can provide an idea about what it was like to have lived through this terrible moment in Barcelona’s history. Open on Sundays, the site has been transformed into a Barcelona City History Museum (MUHBA) in which visitors can explore the winding passageways where in this one space over 1,500 people sought refuge some 80 years ago. (Prior reservations are required.)

Despite the important role they played, for a long time the refugis were forgotten or ignored, and many were destroyed. For example, during Franco’s dictatorship, a glass factory was built on Refugi 307 and the shelter was not discovered until the factory closed. And while several refugis continued to be uncovered, these discoveries did not mean that the city was prepared to confront their significance in the context of its past.

In 2004, the historian Andreu Besolí Martin wrote an article in the magazine Ebre about the shelters, describing them as invisible to the citizens of Barcelona, a consequence of the “incomprehensible pact of silence” that came out of the transition to democracy in Spain. He lamented that while places like London and Berlin had created museums and educational centers dedicated to wartime air attacks, in Barcelona there was a lack of both institutions and publications that could tell people about the shelters and their importance.

In 2008, Besolí told Metropolitan, there have been shifts in attitude in regard to the refugis antiaeris “not only in Barcelona, but also in Catalunya and the rest of Spain.” The 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the war in 2006 resulted in the renovation and opening of various other shelters (Sant Adrià and La Garriga among others).

While shelters such as Refugi 307 helped protect people from the 194 total air raids carried out over the city, there were still approximately 2,500 casualties and thousands more were injured. However, in a population of a million—and considering the revolutionary nature of the raids—it could have been much worse. It was all a forerunner of how other European cities would react to air raids just a few years later in the Second World War.

Yet despite Churchill’s belief that Britons would follow Barcelona’s example, it was not to be. Ramón Perera, a refugee from the Nationalist forces, was spirited to the United Kingdom by British authorities who were interested in his designs for underground shelters. However, ultimately, the government decided that creating such public shelters could make people “cowardly and lazy,” and felt that the community spirit that had motivated the citizens of Barcelona to make their shelters did not exist in Britain. Confidential reports later expressed regret that the Perera model had not been adopted. In London alone, some 40,000 people died in air raids.    

Originally published March 2008, updated October 3, 2021.