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Urban Water Supply in Barcelona and Madrid During the Spanish Civil War

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The Resilient City in World War II

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History ((PSWEH))

Abstract

During the Civil War (1936–1939), Spain became a testing ground of military technologies and tactics that were applied during World War II on a much larger scale. Due to artillery bombardment and aerial bombing, Madrid’s urban water supply approached the brink of collapse. The efforts of the workers of the state water company were fundamental to control leaks and guarantee the city’s water supply. In Barcelona, anarcho-syndicalists collectivized the private water supply company, and despite air raids expanded its services and carried out reforms that enhanced efficient management while achieving greater equity in the provision of water. The importance of water supply services in both cities shows the critical role of utility workers to urban resilience in cities at war.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I am grateful to David Saurí and Hug March for their support throughout our research on water supply in Madrid and Barcelona. This chapter is partly based on two articles I co-authored with them: Santiago Gorostiza, Hug March, and David Sauri, “Servicing Customers in Revolutionary Times: The Experience of the Collectivized Barcelona Water Company during the Spanish Civil War,” Antipode 45, no. 4 (September 2013): 908–25; and Santiago Gorostiza, Hug March, and David Sauri, “‘Urban Ecology under Fire’: Water Supply in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939),” Antipode 47, no. 2 (March 2015): 360–79. I also thank the publishers for giving me permission to use here the map of Madrid region (Fig. 2.2). I am thankful to Alejandro Pérez-Olivares, Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, Simo Laakkonen and John McNeill for their comments on earlier versions of this chapter. I am indebted to José Manuel Naredo, who kindly granted access to Federico Molero’s letters and patiently replied to all my questions about him. I am grateful to all the archives that granted permission to publish their images, and particularly to Carolina Peña Bardasano and to the team at the Pavelló de la República CRAI Library (Barcelona). Finally, I acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, through the “María de Maeztu” program for Units of Excellence (MDM-2015-0552).

  2. 2.

    Hansard (1940). War situation (House of Commons debate), 18 June. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1940/jun/18/war-situation, last accessed May 3, 2018.

  3. 3.

    On the proportion between civil and military casualties between World War I and World War II, see Javier Rodrigo, “Presentación. Retaguardia: Un Espacio de Transformación,” Ayer 76, no. 4 (2009): 13–36 (20); Alan Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 334. On the importance of urban water infrastructure during World War II, see J. Bowyer Bell, Besieged: Seven Cities Under Siege (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2006), particularly the cases of Warsaw, Singapore and Leningrad.

  4. 4.

    Urban bombardment and infrastructure destruction do not belong to the past. In September 2016, battles in Aleppo, Syria left 1.75 million people without water supply. Several other crisis in besieged cities such as Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, or Grozny, Chechenya in the 1990s, illustrate the critical importance of water. For Aleppo, see The Guardian, 24 September 2016, “Syria bombings leave 1.75 million without running water in Aleppo.”

  5. 5.

    On infrastructure and urban flows, see Maria Kaika, City of Flows: Modernity, Nature, and the City (New York: Routledge, 2005); Stephen Graham, “When Infrastructure Fails,” in Stephen Graham, ed., Disrupted Cities. When Infrastructure Fails (New York & London: Routledge, 2009), 1–26. On aerial bombardment and “urban ecologies under fire” see Kenneth Hewitt, “Place Annihilation: Area Bombing and the Fate of Urban Places,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 73, no. 2 (June 1983): 257–84. On the environmental history of work, see Stefania Barca, “Laboring the Earth: Transnational Reflections on the Environmental History of Work,” Environmental History 19, no. 1 (January 2014): 3–27.

  6. 6.

    On the water supply of Barcelona and Madrid, see Enric Tello and Joan Ramon Ostos, “Water Consumption in Barcelona and its Regional Environmental Imprint: A Long-Term History (1717–2008),” Regional Environmental Change 12, no. 2 (2012): 347–61; Hug March, “Taming, Controlling and Metabolizing Flows: Water and the Urbanization Process of Barcelona and Madrid (1850–2012),” European Urban and Regional Studies 22, no. 4 (2015): 350–67; Manel Martín Pascual, Aigües de Barcelona. 150 Anys al Servei de la Ciutat (1867–2017) (Barcelona: Fundació Agbar, 2017); Rosario Martínez Vázquez de Parga, Historia del Canal de Isabel II (Madrid : Fundación Canal de Isabel II, 2001).

  7. 7.

    Santiago Gorostiza, Hug March, and David Sauri, “Servicing Customers in Revolutionary Times: The Experience of the Collectivized Barcelona Water Company during the Spanish Civil War,” Antipode 45, no. 4 (September 2013): 908–25; Santiago Gorostiza, Hug March, and David Sauri, “‘Urban Ecology under Fire’: Water Supply in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939),” Antipode 47, no. 2 (March 2015): 360–79; Santiago Gorostiza, “Potash Extraction and Historical Environmental Conflict in the Bages Region (Spain),” Investigaciones Geográficas, no. 61 (2014): 5–16; Santiago Gorostiza and David Saurí, “Salvaguardar un Recurso Precioso: La Gestión del agua en Madrid durante la Guerra Civil Española (1936–1939),” Scripta Nova 17, no. 457 (2013).

  8. 8.

    The censored text is “Ante la sublevación. Capítulo III,” AAVV-AMTC-149-56. Fundación Pablo Iglesias archive. It was originally a part of Manuel Torres Campañá, Gestión de la Delegación del Gobierno de la República durante 1936 (Canales del Lozoya: Madrid, 1937), 445–449.

  9. 9.

    On the beginning of the coup, see Paul Preston, The Spanish Civil War : Reaction, Revolution and Revenge (London: Harper Perennial, 2006), 99–114. On Canales del Lozoya, see Julián Diamante, De Madrid al Ebro. Mis Recuerdos de la Guerra Civil Española (Madrid: Fundación Ingeniería y Sociedad, 2011), 55–57; and José María Sanz García, Las Aguas de Madrid, en Paz y en Guerra, de la Segunda República (Madrid: Ayuntamiento de Madrid, 2000), 31.

  10. 10.

    Ramón Salas Larrazábal, Historia del Ejército Popular de la República, Volumen I (Madrid: La Esfera de los Libros, 2006), 326–336; Sanz García, Las Aguas de Madrid, 26–27.

  11. 11.

    “Ante la sublevación. Capítulo III,” AAVV-AMTC-149-56, Fundación Pablo Iglesias archive, 13.

  12. 12.

    Vicente Rojo, Historia de la Guerra Civil Española (Barcelona: RBA, 2010), 233–237.

  13. 13.

    Sanz García, Las Aguas de Madrid , 31–33.

  14. 14.

    “Ante la sublevación. Capítulo III,” AAVV-AMTC-149-56, Fundación Pablo Iglesias archive, 22.

  15. 15.

    See for instance ABC, September 10, 1936, 13; ABC, October 1, 1936, 14; Federico Bravo Morata, Historia de Madrid . Volumen XI Extra (Madrid: Fenicia, 1985), 20; Sanz García, Las Aguas de Madrid, 31–33.

  16. 16.

    “Ante la sublevación. Capítulo III,” AAVV-AMTC-149-56, Fundación Pablo Iglesias archive, 32–43; letter signed by Federico Molero, engineer of Canales del Lozoya and member of the Communist Party, Moscow, December 1, 1966, personal collection of José Manuel Naredo; Bravo Morata, Historia de Madrid , 106–107; Canales del Lozoya, Obras Públicas: Aportación a la Guerra (Madrid: Talleres Espasa, 1937), 45; Sanz García, Las Aguas de Madrid, 31–33.

  17. 17.

    ABC, September 27, 1936, 9; Boletín Oficial de los Canales del Lozoya , 1936, n°690, 31 December 1936.

  18. 18.

    Myrna Margulies Breitbart, “Spanish Anarchism: An Introductory Essay,” Antipode 10–11, no. 3–1 (December 1978): 60–70. For an account of the role of CNT in the Spanish Civil War, see José Peirats and Chris Ealham, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution (Hastings: The Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies, 2001). There is a wide literature on the collectivizations but it has often focused on regional or local experiences, particularly agrarian. For a recent review, see Assumpta Castillo, “Anarchism and the Countryside: Old and New Stumbling Blocks in the Study of Rural Collectivization during the Spanish Civil War,” International Journal of Iberian Studies 29, no. 3 (September 2016): 225–39. For the case of industry and services in Barcelona, see Antoni Castells Durán, Les Col·lectivitzacions a Barcelona, 1936–1939 (Barcelona: Editorial Hacer, 1993).

  19. 19.

    Regional Government to SGAB workers committee, 24 September 1936, box 7373, AGAB. See also La Vanguardia, September 30, 1936, 8. On the school, named after pedagogue Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia, see Luz y Fuerza, 5, April 1937, 2.

  20. 20.

    Service note n°17, October 3, 1936, box 10,998, AGAB.

  21. 21.

    On perpetual contracts, see Manel Martín Pascual, “Aigua i Societat a Barcelona entre les Dues Exposicions (1888–1929)” (unpublished PhD thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2007), 240–249.

  22. 22.

    See for instance letter from L’Hospitalet city council, 22 October 1936, box 7371, AGAB; see also letter from Subcomité de Defensa de Barriada “19 de Julio” to SGAB workers committee, February 8, 1937, box 7375, AGAB.

  23. 23.

    On the relations between anarchism and human ecology in the Iberian Peninsula see Eduard Masjuan, La Ecología Humana en el Anarquismo Ibérico (Barcelona: Icaria, 2000). Regarding the installation of water-using facilities in factories during the war, see for instance Anglo-Española de Electricidad E.C. to Aguas de Barcelona E.C., February 2, 1938, box 7377, AGAB.

  24. 24.

    See for instance Regional Government to Aguas de Barcelona E.C., February 2, 1938, box 7377.

  25. 25.

    On the airlift and the advance of the Francoist troops towards Madrid, see Preston, The Spanish Civil War , 116–120. On international correspondents in the Spanish Civil war, see Paul Preston, We Saw Spain Die: Foreign Correspondents in the Spanish Civil War (London: Constable, 2008).

  26. 26.

    On the battle of Madrid, see Preston, The Spanish Civil War , 163–198. On the aerial bombings, see Josep Maria Solé i Sabaté and Joan Villarroya i Font, España en Llamas: La Guerra Civil desde el Aire (Madrid: Ediciones Temas de Hoy, 2003), 45–60. On the death of Canales’ employee, see Boletín Oficial de los Canales del Lozoya , n°690, 31 December 1936. The Francoist plans for the occupation of Madrid took water supply into consideration, see Alejandro Pérez-Olivares, “La Victoria Bajo Control. Ocupación, Orden Público y Orden Social del Madrid Franquista (1936–1948),” (PhD thesis, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2017), 83–95, available at http://eprints.ucm.es/45481/

  27. 27.

    On the impacts of bombing and the efforts of Canales del Lozoya to control the leaks, see Bowyer Bell, Besieged, 22–26; Canales del Lozoya, Obras Públicas, 45; Diamante, De Madrid al Ebro, 79–80, 96, 99–100. On the casualties of firefighters in Madrid, see Juan Carlos Barragán Sanz and Pablo Trujillano Blasco, Historia del Cuerpo de Bomberos de Madrid. De los Matafuegos al Windsor (1577–2005) (Madrid: La Librería Ediciones, 2006), 258–259. On the Francoist offensive in the University City, see Fernando Calvo González-Regueral, La Guerra Civil en la Ciudad Universitaria (Madrid: La Librería Ediciones, 2012), 59–61; and Preston, The Spanish Civil War , 189.

  28. 28.

    On the war efforts of Madrid water company, see Canales del Lozoya, Obras Públicas, 36–41. On mapping the city’s underground infrastructures, see “Ante la sublevación. Capítulo III”, AAVV-AMTC-149-56, Fundación Pablo Iglesias archive, 10–11. The role of Canales’ engineer Federico Molero has been referred to by Diamante, De Madrid al Ebro, 65 and 74; Enrique Lister, Nuestra Guerra. Memorias de un Luchador ([Zaragoza]: Silente, 2007), 143 and 147; and Pedro Montoliú, Madrid en la Guerra Civil (Madrid: Sílex, 1999), 264–267, among others, but can be read in Molero’s own words in letter signed in Moscow, December 1, 1966, personal collection of José Manuel Naredo. On the subterranean war from the Francoist perspective, see Servicio Histórico Militar, Guerra de Minas en España: 1936–1939: Contribución al Estudio de esta Modalidad de Nuestra Guerra de Liberación (Madrid: Imprenta del Servicio Geográficos del Ejército, 1948), 59 and 69.

  29. 29.

    Lack of water pressure remained a problem in Madrid and Francoist newspapers announced that the capital was falling short of water. However, this problem existed prior to the war. See Montoliú, Madrid en la Guerra Civil, 27, 40 and 496–497; Sanz García, Las Aguas de Madrid, 25.

  30. 30.

    On the campaign “To defend Madrid is to defend Catalonia”, see Antoni Segura and Andreu Mayayo, Defensar Madrid és Defensar Catalunya: Solidaritat en Temps de Guerra (1936–1939) (Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona. Serveis Editorials Municipals, 2009). On the water-tank trucks given by the Barcelona city council to Madrid, see La Vanguardia, December 22, 1936, 2. On the Catalan firefighters expedition to Madrid, see Marc Ferrer i Murillo, “Bombers i Defensa Passiva al Vallès durant la Guerra Civil”, in El Vallès: Segona República, Guerra Civil i Postguerra (1931–1945), 2017, 91–108 (100).

  31. 31.

    On the water consumed in Barcelona and the non-payments, see Solidaridad Obrera, January 14, 1937, 4, and Josep Ferret i Pujol, L’Aprofitament de les Aigües Subterrànies del Delta del Llogregat: 1933–1983 ([El Prat de Llobregat]: Comunitat d’Usuaris d’Aigües de l’Àrea Oriental del Delta del Riu Llobregat, 1985), 27. On the problem of salinity in Barcelona’s waters see Santiago Gorostiza, Jordi Honey-Rosés, and Roger Lloret, Rius de Sal: Una Visió Històrica de la Salinització dels Rius Llobregat i Cardener durant el segle XX (Sant Feliu de Llobregat: Edicions del Llobregat: Centre d’Estudis Comarcals del Baix Llobregat, 2015); Santiago Gorostiza and David Sauri, “Dangerous Assemblages: Salts, Trihalomethanes and Endocrine Disruptors in the Water Palimpsest of the Llobregat River, Catalonia,” Geoforum 81 (May 2017): 153–62. Regarding the reforms in Madrid, see Martínez Vázquez de Parga, Historia del Canal de Isabel II, 230–239.

  32. 32.

    On the agricultural collective of Barcelona, see Clara Garcia, Joan Milà, and Aurora Rius, “La Colectividad Agrícola de Barcelona. Una Aportació al Fet Col·lectivista a Catalunya,” Quaderns d’Història Contemporània. Revolució i Guerra Civil. Recerques a l’Arxiu Històric Nacional de Salamanca (SGC), 1983, 131–43. On the complaints about water used for gardening, see several letters received by ABEC during 1938, boxes 7377 and 7378, AGAB. ABEC also published a warning note in the press, La Vanguardia, August 19, 1937, 2. On urban gardening in Madrid, see Campo Libre, August 20, 1938, 12–13 and La Vanguardia, October 7, 1938, 5.

  33. 33.

    On the petitions of citizen committees to ABEC, see for instance City Council to ABEC, August 13 and 17, 1938, box 7377, AGAB. On aerial bombings in Barcelona, see Santiago Albertí and Elisenda Albertí, Perill de Bombardeig!: Barcelona Sota les Bombes, 1936–1939 (Barcelona: Albertí Editor, 2004).

  34. 34.

    On the impact of the loss of the Pyrenees’ dams on the Catalan industry, see Josep Maria Bricall, Política Econòmica de la Generalitat (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1970), 47–55. On the water ban published by the Catalan government and the permission to increase water price, see Diari Oficial de la Generalitat de Catalunya, April 28, 1938, n°118, 371; and Diari Oficial de la Generalitat de Catalunya, June 23, 1938, n°174, 1035. On the complaints and concerns about water pressure, key for the work of firefighters, see, among other, Barcelona Fire Brigade to ABEC, January 18, 1938, box 7377, AGAB; ABEC to Collectivised Tram Company of Barcelona, July 22, 1938, box 7378, AGAB.

  35. 35.

    On the refugees in Barcelona, see Joan Serrallonga i Urquidi, Refugiats i Desplaçats dins la Catalunya en Guerra, 1936–1939 (Barcelona: Base, 2004), 190. On the impact of typhoid fever in Barcelona in 1939, see Pere Conillera i Vives, L’Aigua de Montcada: L’abastament Municipal d’aigua de Barcelona: Mil Anys d’història (Barcelona: Institut d’Ecologia Urbana de Barcelona, 1991), 111. On the military residence, see Santiago Gorostiza, “Diagonal 666. Un Monument a l’ocupació de l’exèrcit Franquista,” L’Avenç, 389 (April 2013): 42–50. On typhoid fever rates in Madrid, see Pedro Matos Massieu, Canal de Isabel II, Memoria 1939–1945 (Madrid: Ministerio de Obras Públicas, 1947), Matos Massieu, 1947, 129, 135, 139, 298–299 and annex 14. On the occupation of Madrid, see Alejandro Pérez-Olivares, “Objetivo Madrid: planes de ocupación y concepción del orden público durante la Guerra Civil española,” Culture & History Digital Journal 4, no. 2 (December 2015): 1–13, available at http://cultureandhistory.revistas.csic.es/index.php/cultureandhistory/article/viewArticle/84/276 and Daniel Oviedo-Silva and Alejandro Pérez-Olivares (Coords.), Madrid, una ciudad en guerra (1936–1948) (Madrid: Los Libros de la Catarata, 2016).

  36. 36.

    El País, October 11, 2013, “Aflora el ‘Frente del Agua,’” https://elpais.com/ccaa/2013/10/10/madrid/1381413281_187426.html Last accessed May 2, 2018; ABC, July 29, 2010, “Una bomba de la Guerra en el Canal,” http://www.abc.es/20100724/madrid/bomba-guerra-canal-20100724.html Last accessed May 3, 2018.

  37. 37.

    Advertisement published in Luz y Fuerza, 7, July 1937. On the museum of Saint Petersburg Vodokanal, see http://www.vodokanal-museum.ru/en/muzejnyj_kompleks/kratkaya_informaciya/

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  1. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), Barcelona, Spain

    Santiago Gorostiza

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  1. University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    Simo Laakkonen

  2. Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA

    J. R. McNeill

  3. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Richard P. Tucker

  4. Department of Biology, University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    Timo Vuorisalo

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Gorostiza, S. (2019). Critical Networks. In: Laakkonen, S., McNeill, J.R., Tucker, R.P., Vuorisalo, T. (eds) The Resilient City in World War II. Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17439-2_2

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