ARCHIVED - Over 1,000 unexploded Spanish Civil War shells and missiles are still being deactivated per year

Monday marks the 80^th anniversary of the end of the internal conflict in Spain

Monday 1st April marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Spanish Civil War, a conflict in which estimates of the number of lives lost range from 100,000 to over 2 million, and although fewer and fewer people can remember the proclamation of victory by General Franco in 1939 the war is still one of the aspects which most deeply preoccupies the nation.

In part this is due to the recent emergence of a radical right-wing political party which seems to share many aspects of Franco’s ideology, in part it is through the perpetuation of the feelings of regional discrimination in Catalunya on the part of the separatist parties, and in part the conflict remains headline news due to the national government’s insistence on exhuming the mortal remains of the dictator, whose rule ended with his death in 1975. But a more mundane reminder of the three years of war, and one which is less controversial, is the fact that even now it is not uncommon for unexploded bombs and missiles to be found all over Spain, many of them posing clear threats to the wellbeing of members of the public.

Every year the bomb disposal unit of the Guardia Civil is called out to deactivate over 1,000 devices, one of the most recent examples being a 45-centimetre projectile which was found during digging for a public works project in Casa de Campo park in the city of Madrid. This is one of over 300 explosive devices from the Civil War to have been found in Madrid since 1985, and similar totals have accrued in many other locations all over Spain: in Cartagena, for example, the figure has reached 241 including 218 artillery shells, around 200 of which were removed from Cala Cortina in three weeks in May 2018.

Many of these devices are still active: only if the casing opens is the explosive itself likely to degrade, and this was not the case, for example, in May last year, when a 38-year-old was seriously injured by the explosion of a shell he kept in his home in Arévalo, in the province of Ávila. The Guardia Civil found a hoard of such mementoes in the property, and there are numerous examples of similar “hobbies” leading to situations of extreme danger.

In answer to a question in parliament recently, it has been reported that around 80 per cent of the 35,000 explosives deactivated by the Guardia in the last 33 years dated from the Civil War, the highest totals being in the provinces of Teruel (3,693), Asturias (2,283), Madrid (2,277), Tarragona (2,194) and Castellón (2,058), and that the figures show no sign of decreasing with the passing of the years.

Some alarming anecdotes relate to these deactivations. Last month a resident of Loranca de Tajuña in Guadalajara reported finding a grenade, and when officer Eusebio Rodríguez went to assess it he was amazed when the caller told him that something inside must be broken, because it rattled when he shook it: the man didn’t realize how lucky he was to be alive to inform the expert!

Another alarm came in 1985, when a fishing boat in the Bay of Biscay brought ashore two First World War bombs, and during the deactivation one of them emitted a poisonous gas which left one officer in hospital for four days: the second bomb was sealed off underneath the sea bed as a precaution.

In the light of these incidents, it is not surprising that every new discovery is followed by a reminder from the Guardia Civil of the importance of not touching or disturbing suspect devices, whether they are stumbled upon in the countryside or inside buildings: it is amazing how many are stored away in old garages and lock-ups and are not found until the owners undertake a clear-out. Call the authorities immediately - the 112 emergency services line or 062 for the Guardia Civil - making sure that you give the best possible indication of the exact location of the object, possibly by means of the GPS function on the mobile phone.

Image: a Civil War shell which was deactivated in La Unión in 2015

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