Topographic map of a Civil War air raid shelter on Mallorca Street with Independència (BCN)

BACKGROUND

It was not the first time and probably will not be the last that ATICS, SL, a company dedicated to the Management and dissemination of Archaeological Heritage of which we are regular collaborators, required us to erect a Civil War Air Raid Shelter (see “Laser Scanning Works of the Civil War Air Raid Shelter No. 173 on Ripollès Street in Barcelona”)

LIFTING

This time it was an unfinished air raid shelter. In fact, the accessible part is about 20 meters long, of which only the first six or seven meters have the structure of the finished shelter, with an access staircase, of which only two sections are visible that do not reach street level and a section with a width of 1.30 meters by 1.90 meters high and a ceiling finished with a Catalan vault.

The day we access it, the ATICS team has been studying it for days and removing remains, but even so, after the first few meters where the staircase is visible, the Catalan vault, the walls and the ground immediately disappear. There are only remains of walls and a good slope of ground until the second point where the shelter turns. Towards the bottom it is dark and the humidity clouds the optics of the Total Station which we have to constantly clean. The automatic search of the Station does us some bad tricks and instead of aiming the prism it shoots at our reflective vests…it's time to repeat.

The dragging of UTM coordinates has been necessary for the correct location of the shelter, due to the area where it is located, which may be interfered by nearby infrastructures or buildings.

It has reached the point where the height and conditions allowed it, however, the years that the shelter has been covered have caused the deepest part of it to be collapsed with sediments.