The Cádiz Explosion was a military accident which occurred at 9:45 pm, on 18 August 1947 at a storage depot in the Base de Defensas Submarinas (Submarine Defence Base) in

Cádiz Cádiz (, , ) is a city and port in southwestern Spain. It is the capital of the Province of Cádiz, one of eight that make up the autonomous community of Andalusia. Cádiz, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Western Europe, ...

, Spain, when some 1,737 sea mines,

torpedoes A modern torpedo is an underwater ranged weapon launched above or below the water surface, self-propelled towards a target, and with an explosive warhead designed to detonate either on contact with or in proximity to the target. Historically, su ...

and depth charges (of a total of 2,228 distributed in two depots), containing 200

tonne The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton ( United State ...

s of TNT and

amatol Amatol is a highly explosive material made from a mixture of TNT and ammonium nitrate. The British name originates from the words ammonium and toluene (the precursor of TNT). Similar mixtures (one part dinitronaphthalene and seven parts amm ...

, exploded for unknown reasons.Aparicio Florido, José Antonio (2009)
"La catástrofe de Cádiz de 1947 y la explosión de otros polvorines militares"
International Association of Emergency Managers. Retrieved 5 August 2013. Official figures given at the time were 150 dead, a figure that has since been reduced to 147, and 5,000 injured, but other sources refer to much higher figures given the extension of the explosion and the populated districts and types of buildings destroyed."Cadiz Explosion Kills 1000" Thursday, August 21, 1947
'' The Examiner''. Retrieved 4 August 2013. As well as the actual military facilities destroyed, the populated districts of San Severiano and San José were seriously damaged. Among the buildings totally wrecked there were the Asilo de Ancianos (old age peoples' home), the Casa Cuna orphanage (41 deaths), a nearby factory (100 workers killed), the Madre De Dios Hospital (no figures given). The Echevarrieta shipyard, right next to the storage depot, and which employed 2,500 workers, only lost 27 men because there were fewer workers on the nightshift. This shipyard had signed a lucrative contract in the mid–1920s to supply the German Navy with German-designed torpedoes and had also built a U-Boat for testing and training. The explosion also destroyed the

Punic The Punic people, or western Phoenicians, were a Semitic people in the Western Mediterranean who migrated from Tyre, Phoenicia to North Africa during the Early Iron Age. In modern scholarship, the term ''Punic'' – the Latin equivalent of the ...

Phoenicia Phoenicia () was an ancient thalassocratic civilization originating in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily located in modern Lebanon. The territory of the Phoenician city-states extended and shrank throughout their his ...

necropolis A necropolis (plural necropolises, necropoles, necropoleis, necropoli) is a large, designed cemetery with elaborate tomb monuments. The name stems from the Ancient Greek ''nekropolis'', literally meaning "city of the dead". The term usually im ...

, whose excavation works had featured in '' National Geographic'' in 1924.

Different versions

No official technical explanation was made public. The findings of the secret military inquest were never published and all the relevant documentation was later destroyed in a fire at the naval archive centre. Aparicio Florido, José Antonio (2008
"La Explosión de Cádiz de 1947"
Retrieved 4 August 2013. There was much talk of sabotage,
''

La Voz de Cádiz LA most frequently refers to Los Angeles, the second largest city in the United States. La, LA, or L.A. may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * La (musical note), or A, the sixth note * "L.A.", a song by Elliott Smith on ''Figure ...

''. Retrieved 4 August 2013. and this theory was supported by several factors, including the increased activity of the

Spanish Maquis The Maquis were Spanish guerrillas who waged an irregular warfare against the Francoist Spain, Francoist dictatorship within Spain following the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republican defeat in the Spanish Civil War until the early ...

around this time, that several witnesses had seen a small boat leaving the site in the dark, and that the Spanish secret service had received information that something was about to happen in Cádiz, together with the fact that Franco did not visit the city until several months after the explosion. On 26 August, the front page of ''

La Vanguardia ' (; , Spanish for "The Vanguard") is a Spanish daily newspaper, founded in 1881. It is printed in Spanish and, since 3 May 2011, also in Catalan (Spanish copy is automatically translated into Catalan). It has its headquarters in Barcelona and i ...

'' carried a statement from Radio Nacional de España officially accusing the BBC of an "ongoing campaign of defamation against the ''Régimen'' and the Spanish nation". The press release ended with, “One has only to contrast this deceitful behaviour of the BBC, and its hatred of Spain and its ''Régimen'', a falsehood which we have had occasion to demonstrate as such, with the clean and moral history of Spanish radio which has never yet been shown to have erred or been mistaken in any of its news items.”"Contrasta esta falaz conducta de la B.B.C. y su odio a España y a su Régimen, a lo que frecuentemente tenemos que salir de paso con pruebas fehacientes de su falsedad, con la historia limpia y moral de la Radio española, que no ha podido ser desmentida hasta la fecha ni en una sola noticia equivocada o errónea." in “Ante la falsedad de la B.B.C. de Londres, con motivo de la catástrofe de Cádiz”
''

''. Retrieved 4 August 2013. The press release stated that the "mines that caused the explosion were from the ' Reds' and Russian-made, and that they were less stable than Spanish mines precisely for that reason". More recent investigations have revealed that the munitions had been brought to Cádiz in 1943 as part of Franco's strategy to mine the Spanish coast from Huelva to Málaga with 16,000 mines to prevent the Allies entering Spain following Operation Torch, the November 1942 Allied victory in North Africa. The plan was abandoned following the

Allied invasion of Italy The Allied invasion of Italy was the Allied amphibious landing on mainland Italy that took place from 3 September 1943, during the Italian campaign of World War II. The operation was undertaken by General Sir Harold Alexander's 15th Army Gro ...

in September 1943.

Aftermath

At the time of the explosion, Cádiz had a population of about 100,000, with the shipyard employing almost 2,500. It was the largest single employer in the city, and its destruction meant that many families no longer had any income. The shipyards were not opened again until they were nationalised in 1952, and it took until 1956 for steady work to be available there. Pérez de Guzmán Padrón, Sofía (2011
“La representación social de una actividad productiva como contexto y apoyo de la acción sindical. Los astilleros gaditanos en las coplas del carnaval” in ''Cuadernos de Relaciones Laborales'', Vol. 29, Núm. 1 (2011) 201-225
Retrieved 4 August 2013. The situation was so dire that, among other initiatives, the following year the

Francoist Regime Francoist Spain ( es, España franquista), or the Francoist dictatorship (), was the period of Spanish history between 1939 and 1975, when Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War with the title . After his death in 1975, Spai ...

decided to permit the return of the

Carnival Carnival is a Catholic Christian festive season that occurs before the liturgical season of Lent. The main events typically occur during February or early March, during the period historically known as Shrovetide (or Pre-Lent). Carnival ...

for which the city had been famous before Franco prohibited it after the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polic ...

. Rather than allow the use of the term "carnival", the Regime organised the "Fiestas Típicas Gaditanas", and allowed the population to compose their famous coplas, albeit under strict censorship.

References

External links

"Un gráfico del lugar de la catastrofe" (Plan of the area affected by the explosion)
'' ABC''
¿ Te acuerdas? - Explosión en Cádiz, 1947. News broadcast. 16 August 2009

RTVE The Corporación de Radio y Televisión Española, S.A. (; ), known as Radiotelevisión Española or RTVE, is the state-owned public corporation that assumed in 2007 the indirect management of the Spanish public radio and television service kno ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cadiz Explosion Explosions in 1947 1947 in Spain Explosions in Spain 1947 disasters in Spain

Different versions

Aftermath

See also

References

External links