Morphometry of Anti-Aircraft Shelters Under Ribalta Institute and Tetuán Square in Castellón de la Plana

Abstract

During the first years of the Spanish Civil War, the city of Castellón was attacked by numerous bombardments, mostly by air. In order to protect the inhabitants of the city from them, the Passive Defense Board (Junta de la Defensa Pasiva ) was created in the municipality, which would be responsible for planning the construction of the necessary air-raid shelters as a measure to protect the population from shelling. Although some three hundred shelters were planned, most of them have been destroyed or abandoned. Fortunately, the Municipal Historical Archive of Castellón de la Plana holds much of the documentation carried out by the Passive Defense Board where you can find, among other information, the original plans of many of the shelters projected. Furthermore, the current Archaeological and Ethnological Heritage Catalogue includes two of these shelters as locally relevant goods: one was built under the Francisco Ribalta Institute and another is located under Tetuán Square. In order to preserve and contribute to a greater knowledge of this architectural typology, this article shows the graphic and constructive analyses that have been made of these two refuges, which constitute unpublished documents that allow researchers, compare them with other similar constructions.