The Civil War air-raid shelter located under the property adjacent to the Teatre Metropol in Tarragona has been temporarily reopened this Monday to check its condition before the rehabilitation of the building and its surroundings.
The inspection has ruled out the image of an underground network connected to the cultural equipment. What appeared after uncovering the cavity was a 15-meter tunnel excavated in living rock, with no connecting galleries, a fact that confirms the shelter was left unfinished.
The drone confirmed that the shelter had no continuation galleries
The structure is dated 1937 and had remained boarded up since 1940. The reopening was done within the preliminary works for waterproofing the property, an action that also allowed documenting whether the connection with the Metropol Theater existed, as oral testimonies had suggested.
To inspect the cavity, the Generalitat Firefighters used a drone. Afterwards, with the available documentation, the captured images, and the advice of the Collapsed Structures Group, the teams decided against physically entering the interior.
The decision left the intervention in a visual and technical check from the immediate exterior. Once the state of the space was verified, the operators re-covered the access.
The reopening was integrated into the previous works of the building next to the Metropol
The action did not respond solely to patrimonial interest. The technicians incorporated it into the preliminary rehabilitation works to know the real conditions of the subsoil before proceeding with the waterproofing of the building and the area closest to the theater.
In addition to Bombers, municipal technicians from Patrimonio and agents from the Guàrdia Urbana de Tarragona participated in the operation. The intervention mobilized five units of the Bombers de la Generalitat on Monday morning.
The shelter had been sealed around eight decades ago and its reopening has allowed two concrete facts to be established before continuing with the rehabilitation of the property, which was excavated in living rock and whose path ends at 15 meters, without any continuation branch.