The new entrance to the Camí d’Onda Air-raid Shelter in the historic center of Borriana, Spain

Abstract

The Spanish Civil War was the first military conflict with air raids used against the civilian population. Franco’s subsequent dictatorship neglected these infrastructures and most of them were destroyed or buried. Nowadays many Spanish municipalities have decided to recover and place value on shelters as symbols of concord. Those that have survived have remained covered up and any trace of their original entrances was erased by new urban operations at the street level. This is the case of the Camí d’Onda Air-raid Shelter in Borriana, Spain, whose original entrance ramp completely disappeared in the mid-1940s. The authors took up the challenge of designing a new access which should meet many constraints which involved historical, social, technical and urban design aspects.