The light in the shelter goes out. In complete darkness, we hear the howl of an anti-aircraft alarm, hurried footsteps and voices, the motorized sound of airplanes that anticipates the horror that the bombs that can already be heard in the distance will cause... a horror that we do not feel because it is a recording that recreates what was lived more than eighty years ago within these thick walls that make up the shelter of Plaza Seneca, in the basement of what was for decades a bus station and today a central meeting point in the Ensanche of Alicante.
It is not easy to sign up for this visit. The information provided by the municipal websites, both those of the City Council and the Tourist Board, is confusing. He refers us to the association of guides of the Valencian Community, where they inform us that the contract is now managed by another company, Tramuntana, whose website lists many routes throughout the province, but not this one.
After several attempts, we managed to contact and set an appointment. According to what they inform us, they have just taken over the operation of this tourist route and have barely had time to distribute some brochures at the tourist offices.
We are a small group, five retired friends, from various cities in central and northern Spain, who live in Playa de San Juan, three women and two men, and the chronicler. Only the guide is foreign, Julien, a young Frenchman who is around 30 and in his first group speech, after charging us the curious price of 4.72 euros each, he asks us if we know what year the Spanish civil war began. We sigh.
Despite the first impression that he has taken us for idiots, the guide takes the reins and introduces us to the matter and the buildings that make up the interpretation center - which is not a museum, there are hardly any original objects, almost everything is replicas - located in the Machine House, two twin buildings made of masonry and bricks that preserve shrapnel impacts produced in the war on their exterior and that were erected at the beginning of the century to house the first sanitation machinery that served the nearby port of Alicante.
There we find replicas of the war posters, among which we distinguish the signature of the artist Gastón Castelló, life-size reproductions of photographs taken during the bombings, children's drawings that reflect the trauma caused by the bombs, a fire truck, a reproduction of the Stanbrook who rescued the last republicans desperate to avoid the wall or jail in the port... and Julien offers us a simple and accurate explanation.
In front of a model that reflects the state in which the market square was left after the fascist attack of May 25, one of the few that occurred during the day, because at night it was easier to avoid the anti-aircraft defense, our guide remembers that a That morning, a shipment of sardines attracted many women, children and the elderly, victims of a massacre greater than the one immortalized by Picasso in Gernika.
A few meters away, Julien invites us to enter one of the largest shelters that were built during the war, of the more than eighty distributed throughout the city. How many thousands of people have taken buses for decades in this square, ignoring the secret hidden under its asphalt. Today there are many dog walkers, friends who slide on their skates, couples and groups chatting on their benches. Most have never descended the narrow stairs that open the way to a long, narrow shelter, longer than one imagines from the outside.
It was built to accommodate about two thousand people. The inscriptions are preserved: "No smoking", "keep silent while the alarm lasts", "respect the shelter that belongs to everyone", despite the decades of abandonment - in the post-war period it was used to grow mushrooms -; During the bombings, the doors were not closed to prevent debris from blocking them, the walls were arranged in a zig-zag pattern to prevent the entry of shrapnel.
Some, out of caution or fear of not being able to reach it in time, came to sleep there. The proximity of the port, a priority objective for the Italian planes arriving from the Balearic Islands, made it particularly necessary.
The visit concludes in Balmis Square, in a smaller shelter, built at the request of the bourgeois families who lived in the area. Its configuration is reminiscent of the interior of a ship, with the curved openings that connect the different rooms. For some reason, in one of them they have accumulated pairs of shoes, perhaps so that we can get an idea of the space occupied by their wearers. Sitting on one of its stone benches, in silence, we think of those who are no longer here, but were, and of those who today suffer the same terror, in Gaza, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine...
The visit lasted just an hour and a half. It should be included in the school calendar, it is recommended for the tourist - it is evident that it lacks promotion, it is a miracle if a foreigner manages to find out about its existence - but also for the people of Alicante, who often regret the lack of cultural offerings in their city and They don't usually take advantage of what they have at hand.
