The Torre Balldovina air raid shelter (Santa Coloma de Gramenet). A case of social museography

Abstract

Air raid shelters constitute a relevant part of the heritage of the Civil War in Catalonia. Tanmateix, the name of visitable shelters is scarce, and those that present museum options face are menys. The Torre Balldovina shelter, in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, inaugurated in 2023, is one of the few that presents a museum of the next generation. It is a gallery shelter of small dimensions in which it is difficult to insert museography, and in fact it all presents a complex circulation around the entrance of the passadissos. These problems extend to most of the gallery shelters in the country. The importance of the museography model applied to Torre Balldovina arises, precisely, in the fet that proposes an attractive museography that is inserted in the so-called «social museography» characterized by an unequivocal didactic will and to use sustainable, cost-effective elements and technologies. reasonable and linked to the territory. In the case of Torre Balldovina, the intelligent use of audiovisual and scenographic elements defines a new type of model with the possibility of reapplication in the heritage linked to the air war.