Research and identification of war damaged buildings during the bombardments in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)

Abstract

This briefing is referring to research which has taken place during the last three years in the Building Construction Laboratory in EPSEB. For this work we relied on the help of two students of the Building Construction School of Barcelona (Spain) In our first research project, we discovered that Barcelona has two registers of war damaged buildings during the bombardments that took place in the city during the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939. These registers identify the rate of damage to the buildings in various parameters (Total ruin, partial ruin and slight damage). The first register belongs to the Passive Defence Council that registered, more or less, about 1800 buildings. The second register relates to all the calls that were made by the Barcelona’s firemen during the bombardments, and these account for approximately 1600 buildings. The difference between the two registers, about 200 buildings, is due to differences of viewpoint between both organisations. In spite of this, there is not a significant difference, so for this research we have used the Barcelona’s firemen call’s register. From all this data and the cartographic information that is currently available in Barcelona’s Administrative Archive, we began, first of all, to work on identifying and later cataloguing the actual condition of all buildings that were damaged during the bombardments in Barcelona. This research has allowed us to study the current condition of the damaged buildings, though we centred the research only on the façades. Accordingly, we have been able to conclude that, nowadays, most of the war-damaged heritage buildings are still in existence, and also we have examined the cracks and fissures that appeared in the buildings during the bombardments. This research has allowed us to explore new work and research lines which we intend to develop shortly. At the present, for example, we are analyzing the impact caused to those buildings which were directly affected by bombs, as well as the buildings surrounding those that received the impacts.