Barcelona March 16th 1937

Houses destroyed by the raid in Poble sec

Eight months into the civil war, at seven in the morning, Barcelona suffered its first aerial bombardment. The bombs fell in Barceloneta and in Poble sec, two working class districts of the city and left seven dead. During the first months of the war little had been done to protect civilians from this insidious new form of warfare. But the destruction and bloodshed caused by this first raid, and by a naval attack the previous month in which seventeen people had died, spurrred the city into action. A massive construction of underground air raid shelters began.

By the end of the war there were over 1000.

This is the story of one of them.