Underground places (military)

Fort San Julià

Located in the town of Sant Julià de Ramis, on a hill 200 m above sea level, this fortification controls access to Girona from the north. It was designed and built under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel Rafael Peralta Maroto between 1893 and 1912 despite having no garrison until 1916.
The fort has a perimeter of 660 m, occupying an area of 22,000 m² and trapezoidal floor, surrounded by a moat with counterscarp of masonry, with a caponier flank the north and half caponier in the east . Another caponier t and the entrance were destroyed by an accidental explosion in the 40's.
On the inside, underground, there are more than 40 rooms: bedrooms for the troops and officers, kitchen, hospital, letrines, water reservoirs, powder-magazines, supplies and services, conected by a network of galleries, corridors and stairways .
At the top there are three batteries, with a total of 14 sites in chin artillery campaign that were never installed, with casemates for his stewardship and ammunition depots. In 1917 this system of fortresses had become obsolete.
In the courtyard of the castle were shot on 13 October 1936 Lieutenant Colonel Dalmases Feliciano Montero, Captain Joaquin Ruiz de Porras and Lieutenant Jose de Borbón Rich, convicted for his participation in the fascist uprising of July 19 in Girona. After the civil war was used as a store of ammunition and explosives recovered from the battle fronts. In 1988 was declared "no military interest" by the Ministry of Defense and sold in 1991.

Fort Sant Julià

	Military Undergrounds Clicar aquí per anar a la versió catalana

	We show here a set of military subterranean facilities abandoned today. Bunkers and coastal batteries, trenchs and casemates, hidden below the ground.

	Catalonian coast bateries In 1945 the defense of the Catalonian coast was comisionated to 7th coastal gunnery regiment that was divided in two groups placed at Barcelona i Roses The first group defended the city of Barcelona: 1th battery, at Montjuïch Castle with Vickers 152.4/50 guns. 2nd battery, placed in Montgat Hill with Krupp cannons 149.1/45 3rd Battery, Bellavista, armed with guns Ordoñez 150/34 4th battery, called Alvarez de Castro, Montjuïc, equipped with cannons OHS 30.5 The second group extended from L'Escala to the Port de la Selva, protecting the Bay of Roses: 5th battery Punta Milà, near L'Escala with Vickers guns 152.4/50 6th battery in Clota, near the port of L'Escala with their guns Garcia Lomas 100/54 7th battery, below the lighthouse of Roses, with cannons Garcia Lomas 100/54 8th battery, Punta Falconera, near Roses, Vickers 152.4/50 9th battery, Punta S'Arnella at El Port de la Selva, Garcia Lomas 100/54 The battery nº 5 was equipped with four Vickers guns caliber 15/24 capable of firing shells of 152.4 mm in diameter and 45 kg in weight with a cadence draft of 4 shots per minute and a range of 21.6 km. His mission was to defend the Bay of Roses in any naval attack. Punta Milà and Falconera batteries, equipped with modern and more powerful guns have a radar station with telemetry, a network of graphometrics observatories communicated with their command centers by 11 km of cabling. The crew of the canyon was formed by 1 sergeant, 2 corporals pointers and 8 gunners. In 1985 it was decided to remove the regiments of coastal defense and dismantle batteries. On the Montjuïc Castle we can contemplate some of the cannons which, fortunately, never entered into combat.

	Bunkers of the " Gutiérrez Line" When in 1944 the Spanish army saw that Hitler and Mussolini not win the war, they fear that the allies armys invade Spain to finish with the Franco regime, then led to an ambitious plan of fortifications from one extreme to another of the Pirineos known as "P line." This fear was reinforced by the international isolation decreed by the UN in March 1946 that caused the closure of borders. Between 1944 - 1948 were built about 5.000 bunkers from about 12.000 soldiers divided into two regiments of works, one in Pamplona and another in Figueres, under the leadership of General Juan Petrirena, chief of fortifications and works of Ministry of the Army. Unlike other systems such as the french Maginot Line or the german Atlantic Wall, Spanish defensive plan was not a continuous line fortified unless dispersed and phased areas that control the road network and strategic passages. In Catalonia there were 96 centers of resistance covering about 4 km² each, mainly in the Vall d'Aran, Cerdanya and the Empordà. Each center of resistance had a monitoring and control bunker, 12 pillboxes, trenches and 12 shooter wells, 2 positions for antitank cannon caliber 105/26, 2 positions for 75 mm cannon, 4 mortars and as deposits for provisions, water and ammunition supplies and also dormitories for the troops. In theory this supossed 128 m³ of earth-moving and excavation, 660 tons of cement, 56,4 tons of steel, 1,486 m³ of gravel, 82 m³ of timber and 743 m³ of sand and its cost was budgeted at 19 million of pesetas if the work were the regiments of the military engineers and 27,5 million if is allocated to private companies. This is the testimony of the historian Josep Benet: "When finished the World War II, to demand the intelligence services of allies of Perpinyà, we reported on the line of fortifications that the Spanish army was building in the catalan Pyrenees. These fortifications were christened with the name of 'Gutiérrez Line', in memory of the Maginot Line ... We reported that the building was with more sand than cement and with very little iron and that these stoled materials were being sold in Figueres and other parts to rebuild the destruction caused by war." Quermançó controls the road from Figueres to Llançà. Cap de Bol dominates the path from Llançà to El Port de la Selva.

	Guns of Cartagena From the eighteenth century Cartagena is the main naval base of the Spanish fleet in the Mediterranean sea. To protect it was build during the 20s of the last century a powerful artillery defense system covering the coast in an area of almost 60 Km and which prevented any enemy ship approaching less than 30 Km from the harbour. Jorel, la Chapa, Loma Alta, are some of the names of those batteries that are still left watching the sea. Cenizas i Castillitos Jorel Loma Larga

	Fort San Julià Located in the town of Sant Julià de Ramis, on a hill 200 m above sea level, this fortification controls access to Girona from the north. It was designed and built under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel Rafael Peralta Maroto between 1893 and 1912 despite having no garrison until 1916. The fort has a perimeter of 660 m, occupying an area of 22,000 m² and trapezoidal floor, surrounded by a moat with counterscarp of masonry, with a caponier flank the north and half caponier in the east . Another caponier t and the entrance were destroyed by an accidental explosion in the 40's. On the inside, underground, there are more than 40 rooms: bedrooms for the troops and officers, kitchen, hospital, letrines, water reservoirs, powder-magazines, supplies and services, conected by a network of galleries, corridors and stairways . At the top there are three batteries, with a total of 14 sites in chin artillery campaign that were never installed, with casemates for his stewardship and ammunition depots. In 1917 this system of fortresses had become obsolete. In the courtyard of the castle were shot on 13 October 1936 Lieutenant Colonel Dalmases Feliciano Montero, Captain Joaquin Ruiz de Porras and Lieutenant Jose de Borbón Rich, convicted for his participation in the fascist uprising of July 19 in Girona. After the civil war was used as a store of ammunition and explosives recovered from the battle fronts. In 1988 was declared "no military interest" by the Ministry of Defense and sold in 1991. Fort Sant Julià