A hidden shelter, Granollers 1938

Last Friday i was going back home when i saw a strange thing going on in the square in front of the library of Can Pedrals. Some standing people giving brochures, a small cue of random people and in the rear two concrete doors elevated creating an X. I asked what this was about, wanting to satisfy my cat curiosity. "This is a shelter from the civil war and we are showing it to the public" - a kind woman responded to me. "Is it a very claustrophobic space? There is artificial light, but in case you feel bad, you can leave immediately."

Inside and after some stone stairs, a humid gallery of 2 meters high and 10 meters wide (separated by 2 horizontal walls) moves us on the 31th of May of 1938. It was Tuesday, not Thursday, points our guide, when Granollers was bombed. I'm still amazed about the fact that i didn't know about this place. More than 200 people died in the main square of La porxada, continues the guide woman who goes on with the construction scarcity of the shelter.


I imagine poor citizens staying here, mainly women and children who saved their life, but totally terrified. They for sure experienced an unforgettable trauma for the rest of their lives. The conditions here were far from being reasonables, no place to sit, no toilets and flimsy ceilings as it was built in the last moments and it was not finished. They thought that the fascists wouldn't arrive to granollers.

30 minutes later, I go back to 2009 and i remember the words from my grandmother, who at the age of 90 is afraid of another civil war, observing the bad economic situation. We are a lucky generation, all in all.