Refugio 307

Today we visited a bomb shelter in Barcelona that was built during the Spanish Civil War. The majority of bomb shelters built during this time were built by the people of the communities in which they were found. The city government built 25 of the approximately 1000 bomb shelters in Barcelona during the war. The shelter we visited was built into the side of the mountain (Montjuic) with pickaxes and other hand tools. It was built to hold about 2,000 people and had three entrances. The three entrances served to allow multiple access points and also to provide alternative exits if one of the exits should be blocked by rubble from a bomb. The shelter was more complete than I thought it would be with its spare amenities. They had electricity (that sometimes was cut), toilets, running water, and even an area that served as an infirmary for any injured people who were found on the way into the shelter. Visiting this place really brought this part of the story of the Civil War to life. I can't even imagine how awful it must have been to live through that.

Our guide explained that when bomber planes were sighted from Montjuic, they rang a bell (or siren, perhaps?) to let people know to take cover. Because they had to use this method (no radar available then) the people had only 1-3 minutes to take cover, which means they had almost no time at all to get from their house to the bomb shelter. The goal of the mostly German and Italian bombers (Franco's fascist friends who had better equipment) was to hit civilians. The guide told us two stories that made me feel beyond lucky for not having (not yet and hopefully not ever) witnessed a war on the land where I live.

The first one was about the bombers. She said that they would purposely target civilian areas and that one story goes that they bombed a school and when the children tried to run to safety, they shot them down. Unfortunately, they had a photograph to prove that this is not a legend. Many tiny bodies lined up in a row, the life shot out of them. What monsters! But I guess that's what war is, isn't it?

The second one was about three days of intense bombing in Barcelona in 1938 (I believe). The people who took cover in this shelter that we were standing in went to the shelter thinking they would be there for a couple of hours, which was the usual amount of time they would spend during each bombing. Instead, they were there for three days, two of which were spent in complete darkness because the electricity was cut. Imagine being in what is essentially a cave about as wide as a mid-size car (maybe slightly wider) sitting on benches in complete darkness while your city is being bombed, not knowing when it will end and if you'll be able to get out. Insane. Just to be clear, the people left in the city were, for the most part, those people who could not afford to evacuate to another country.

So far, this has been my favorite excursion on the program. Barcelona is such a beautiful, thriving city now that I can't even imagine that people were killing each other on the Ramblas. What a devastating scene that must have been. This visit really affected me, and it made the suffering that the Spanish people have experienced very real, especially given that the long dictatorship following the war did nothing to help people recover. It reminded me how very lucky we are as American civilians to never have seen this kind of horror in our own towns and cities, on this grand scale. It also reminded me of how arrogant and cruel our government and military can be when they go into other countries and civilians get caught in the crossfire, and we just sit by talking about how the war in Iraq is just wrong, or maybe we don't even talk about it. It's amazing to me that we aren't protesting in the streets everyday. We just go about our little lives, not worrying about all those civilians and children being killed daily, and not necessarily in Iraq. I guess you can't carry the weight of the world on your shoulders every minute of everyday.

If you want to see more about Refugio 307, the website is here. I couldn't find it in English, but I also didn't look that hard.