The fortified Cinca line and the Pirineo line. Before and after the fortification of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)

Abstract

During the first half of the 20th century, the fortification suffered a process of continuous adaptation, where the need to defend the territory through the use of various types of defensive works was a constant. The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) was not an exception within this adaptive process. In these three years of conflict, the fortification underwent an important little-known evaluation that modified the different defensive works in their appearance, dimension, morphology and organization.The fortified heritage that is still scattered throughout the peninsular territory is witness to these changes. This heritage allows us to understand a process and an evolutionary trend towards increasingly efficient models, the result of the specific experiences of combat in Spanish territory.

In this article, the evolution of the fortified heritage is analyzed through fieldwork and the discipline of architecture through the comparative study of two defensive lines; on the one hand, the Cinca Line, designed and executed at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1937) and on the other hand, the Pyrenees Line or "P Line", designed and executed after the end of the Spanish Civil War (1939-1948).