Imperial College London to host an exhibition on Barcelona's air raid shelters

The prestigious British university Imperial College London will host an exhibition on Barcelona's air raid shelters called 'The role of engineering in times of war. Air-raid shelters in Barcelona'.

The exhibition will run from January 10 to February 28 and is based on photographs of air-raid shelters built in Barcelona during the Civil War. 

Coordinated by Anna Riera, professor of History of Science at Imperial College London, the exhibition is backed by the Barcelona City Council and the Cervantes Institute.   

  

It will be available to visit at the Centre for Languages, Culture and Communication on the South Kensington campus. 

In this exhibition, images and documents from the British archives show the impact of Barcelona's shelters on the United Kingdom's defense during the Second World War.  

The photographs exhibited were taken by Ana Sánchez, a photographer and journalist specializing in historical memory. Most were part of a research project curated alongside historian Xavier Domènech that continues to reveal the city under Barcelona.  

Both will give a seminar at Imperial College London on January 30 on Barcelona's air-raid shelters.

The images of the shelters were already part of an exhibition '1,322. Air-raid shelters in Barcelona' in 2023', produced by Barcelona City Council.  

This new exhibition will open on January 9 with a guided tour and round table on 'War and Passive Defense: Shelters and Exiles' with historians and the director of the Ramsgate Tunnels, the largest civilian air raid shelter in the country, Max Streatfield.