Photo exhibition on the air-raid shelters in Barcelona

The inauguration of the photo exhibition "1.322. Refugis antiaeris de Barcelona", curated by Xavier Domènech, lecturer in the Department of Modern and Early Modern History and member of the Centre for the Study of Dictatorships and Democracies of the UAB, together with Ana Sánchez, will take place on 30 March at 6 p.m. at La Model - Espai Memorial (C. Entença, 155. Barcelona). It is essential to confirm attendance by sending an e-mail to: protocolaj@bcn.cat.

In the same city that became a testing ground for World War II, a new and extraordinary form of resistance was born. The exhibition offers 170 unpublished images of the passive defense spaces in the Catalan capital which saved thousands of lives between 1937 and 1939. Community and private shelters, collectivised factories, Republican institutions and political leaders, such as Juan Negrín or Lluís Companys, show a city hidden ten metres underground. The photographs of a civic, historical and architectural heritage unique in Europe invites us to create another memory of Barcelona in wartime: the memory of the resistance.

The exhibition, based on the photographic work of Ana Sánchez, will be inaugurated on 30 March and will occupy galleries 3 and 4 of La Model until 31 July. Historian Xavier Domènech, curator of the exhibition, states that "the bombing of Barcelona is the necessary link in a long chain of the development of terror in universal terms, but the reaction of its citizens is a small unique crystal demonstrating the values of a city, and its people". The author of the photographs vindicates "the collective struggle symbolised by the network of 1,322 shelters found under our feet, which is also our political heritage, that of the third generation: if reparation demands identifying the repression, giving names and surnames to the victims, photographing these spaces of Barcelona is a way to give identity to the resistance, through the eyes of their granddaughters".