- This shelter was founded and restored in 1998. It was built next to the Encarnacion’s Chuch – thinking that the national troops wouldn’t bomb anything close to a church (they were wrong).
- Today 170 meters of this zigzag gallery built 3 meters deep in the ground can be visited.
- In the corridors we find entrances to other side galleries – today blocked – that were directly connected to many of the close by houses.
- During the route we would observe some of the graffiti in the walls, made by the people who excavated the shelter using picks and shovels.
- Arjonilla was on the republican side during the civil war. It suffered up to 5 raids, so they had to remove Encarnation Church’s top of the bell tower, so that it couldn’t use to point at it from the air.
More about this place…
Jaen’s province was one of the Republican bastions till the end of the civil war, that explains the amount of air-raid shelters scattered all over it. Some of them, such us this one in Arjonilla, has been refurbished and opened to the public for us to have a close look to the horror of war. In times of war, Arjonila’s authorities used the bell in the Encarnacion’s church’s bell tower, to warn people about a possible danger. The main entrance of the gallery we are visiting today, 170 meters long in a zigzag shape, was located right next to this church.
