300px, Entrance to the shelters. 300px, View of the interior of the galleries. The Spanish city of

Almería Almería (, , ) is a city and municipality of Spain, located in Andalusia. It is the capital of the province of the same name. It lies on southeastern Iberia on the Mediterranean Sea. Caliph Abd al-Rahman III founded the city in 955. The city gr ...

suffered up to 52 bombings from air and sea, with a total of 754 bombs dropped during the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, lin ...

. This led to the decision to create a system of underground shelters for the protection of approximately 40,000 civilians. These shelters measure more than 4.5 km long, and they are equipped with a surgery room and a food storage room. They were designed by the local architect Guillermo Langle Rubio, being today the most important and better preserved shelters in all Europe. These refuges have stood the most important attack in all Almería's history, the

Bombardment of Almería The Bombardment of Almería was a naval action which took place on 31 May 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. The ''Kriegsmarine'' bombed the city of Almería in retaliation for a Republican air attack on the . Background In April 1937, the Non ...

, by the

nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

in 1937.

History

Its history began on 22 January 1937, after signing a project known as "The Project of Shelters against bombings in the city of Almería. The cost of its construction was estimated to be 4.5 million pesetas, of which the Central Government subsidized for 2 million. During the construction of these shelters, the government of the city established a special tax of 1% on all purchases to allow this expenditure, along with the cooperation of political parties and unions, contributions from business and voluntary labor work of some citizens. Its construction took a total of 16 months. There is only one original plan, which is supposedly incomplete, that of the layout of the shelters. It is a document printed on

onionskin Onionskin or onion skin is a thin, lightweight, strong, often translucent paper. Though not made from onions, it superficially resembles their thin, papery skins. It was usually used with carbon paper for typing duplicates in a typewriter, for ...

paper dating from 1937, which designs for engravings on the outside of the shelters taken after rehabilitation.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Almeria air raid shelters Almería Air raid shelters