Bomb Shelters

In 1931 the liberal leftist party took power in Barcelona. After this, they began implementing changes to society including redistribution of wealth through land grants and granting citizens the right to vote (including women- very progressive compared to their European neighbors who took devades longer to pass this). The new government declared itself as a republic, referring to the abolishment of King-rule. The new republic allowed women and men to go to school together and removed the church from schools. This angered the conservative sectors of Spanish society including the church and the army. Conservatives didn’t approve of women gaining rights and were upset to lose control of people. For the church, losing control in schools keant they lsot thr power to educate and raise children in Catholicism. In response to the leftist government, military man Francisco Franco launched a military coup. The coup failed but Franco persisted and called upon Hilter (North Atlantic coast) and Mussolini (Mediterranean region) to help bomb their designated regions of Spain. The Spanish civil war became a test run for German and Italian war weapons soon employed during WW2.

One notable town bombed during the war was Guernica, the heart of the Basque Country. This bombing was the first of its kind, an intentional attack on innocent people, known as a terrorist attack. The bombing took place on Monday, market day in the Basque Country, in order to strike the most people. This terrorism marked the first psychological war; people never knew when bombings would occur and therefore lived in constant fear. During the Spanish civil war, more civilians died than military men. Picasso's great painting, Guernica, is a scene of this event. Guernica returned to the Prado in Spain after spending most of its life in the MOMA in New York because Picasso didnt want his work in Spain until the political landscape improved.

In just two years, Barcelona was bombed 200 times, each bombing including up to 50 bombs at once. Because of the war, the men in Catalunya fled south to fight, leaving the population to be mostly children, women, and the elderly. Over the two years,1,400 bomb shelters were built and 3,000 died. Only two shelters remain open: one in Gracia and one in Montjuïc. These mountainous neighborhoods lacked development and were shanty homes for 100,000 people until the early 1980s. The war had such an intense impact on the people and culture of Catalonia you can still hear and taste the remnants of these events today. Taste the culture by eating Bombas or "bombs", fried potato and meatballs served with aioli and brava sauce, invented during the civil war in Barceloneta. Talk to survivors; the tour guide's grandmother passed away of Alzheimer’s at 92 not remembering any family members but being able to recite the address where she was was to meet her family if they were separated during a bombing. Lastly, there's a popular phrase in Catalonia saying, "Be careful they don’t give you cat instead of rabbit." This translates to "be careful they don't trick you." This saying refers to the scarcity of food during the war, forcing Catalans to eat cats, rats, and pigeons. This is also why rabbits in markets still have their heads attached, to prove you are indeed getting rabbit, not cat!