Places of the

A photo contest. April 2016.

Report

An activity by Wikimedia España

General concept In July 17, 1936 a group of Spanish military, seconded by civilian followers from several groups on the political right, rebelled against the government of the Second Republic. They failed to win power outright, but they were not defeated. A civil war started. In April 1, 1939 they declared the war ended as the Republican Army had been defeated. 2016 is the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Wikimedia España has decided to remember that conflict with a photographic contest. This is not a celebration of war. This is just an exercise on picking up pictures of places that are related to it.

Places

Map showing all places on the list.

We have used a list of 372 places related to the Civil War. That list can be found at https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiproyecto:Historia_militar/Guerra_Civil_Españo la/Localizaciones. Those are places that are accessible with reasonable means. Their locations were provided, as also maps and in some cases instructions about how to reach them. The places played some role during the war: neither memorials are included, nor places of previous events, if they are not places where something happened between July 17, 1936 and April 1, 1939. The list has been taken from many sources, from Historical Memory associations to Francoist groups, from re-enactors to university papers, from George Orwell to local historians. It is very difficult to remain neutral when dealing with this theme but it has been tried. In addition we have tried to list places from all provinces in . We managed to add at least one place from every province except Zamora. We tried to include places of government from both sides, but we were more successful with the Republican than with the Francoist side. For this reason and also because of the war development, some provinces –for instance Madrid, Barcelona and - have had more places on the list than others. In any case, we limited the number of places from any autonomous community to one fifth of the total, a limit we kept. The vast majority of proposed items are the original buildings. In a few cases we have looked for the buildings that completely substituted the original ones, as happened with the old bullring in Badajoz or the Colón Hotel in Barcelona.

Rules This contest has had very few and simple rules. 1st Pictures had to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons during April 2016. It did not matter if they had been taken before but that was the time and place to upload them. 2nd Pictures had to be of the proposed places. Other pictures are listed but not entitled to any prize. 3rd There were prizes, five of them, each to one person. 4th Pictures had to have a potential to be used in Wikimedia projects. 5th B25es could not win any prize as he was in charge of the organization. Bunker 1 in Nules, by The possibility of giving a prize to the contestant 19Tarrestnom65, was not on the that pictured more places was ruled out as the list. So it could not win any prize. geographical distribution of items made it unfair. Prizes were books about the Spanish Civil War. All winners received the same books but there is a ranking of winners: first, second, third, fourth and fifth.

Winners of the contest This event was a contest and we had winners and prizes. It is important to explain that the prizes were for five people, not for five pictures. Twelve people voted the 129 images that passed a first selection. Each person could vote to up to ten pictures, giving ten points to the one they liked the most, then nine, eight, and so on. The prizes went to ElBute, Rafesmar, Pedro J Pacheco, Enric and Arkaninger.

First prize was for Bunker of Albendin in Albendin, Cordoba, Spain (2016) - 03.jpg, by ElBute. It shows a bunker on the olive-tree groves in Cordoba province, an almost forgotten battlefield. It was given 93 points and was the first choice of six out of twelve voters.

There was a tie for the second place between Alcazar Toledo Amanecer.jpg –by Rafesmar- and Bunkers of Alamilllo in Luque, Cordoba, Spain (2016) - 10.jpg, by ElBute, 38 points each. While Alamillo is another unsung sector of the Cordoba front, the siege of the Alcazar is one of the most often mentioned battles of the war. No matter how popular the battle was people were killed all the same.

The rest of the top ten was:

Alcazar Toledo 32 4th Rafesmar Jesuitas 2.jpg points

Comandancia Naval de Pedro J 31 5th Malaga.jpg Pacheco points

G3 Búnquers de la 29 6th punta d'en Nati Enric points (Ciutadella).JPG

Vista general de la calle Mayor. Pueblo 26 7th Arkaninger viejo de de points Ebro.JPG Mayor's household in 24 8th Montoro, Cordoba, ElBute points Spain - 01.jpg

Fortines del Parque 22 9th Malopez 21 del Oeste, 1.JPG points

Iglesia a la entrada Alex90jm belchite.JPG 19 10th points Valdelascasas 10.JPG Rodelar

Target Proposed target We wanted to involve 30 editors, at least one of them a new one. At least 80 % of the proposed items should have been pictured (297 places out of 372) and the number of pictures we expected was 1,500. Photo usage should have been 80 % of the number of places pictures (237 individual pictures used). The number of articles created or improved was expected to be 200, in 4 languages and adding 100,000 bytes. Achieved metrics Proposed Metric Achievement Success target achieved % Participants 30 23 77 % NO New 1 5 500 % YES Places 297 73 25 % NO pictured Pictures 1,500 716 48 % NO uploaded Distinct 237 70 30 % NO images used New or improved 200 96 48 % NO articles Bytes added 100,000 38,483 38 % NO Languages 4 8 200 % YES edited

Contestants 23 people took part in this event: Editor Number of images Notes 19Tarrestnom65 384 Jcfidy 56 B25es 51 Organizer Sabbut 37 ElBute 36 Vanbasten 23 36 Chamarasca 19 Enric 17 Rodelar 14 Rafesmar 11 Jnmb56 10 New editor Playant 9 Arkaninger 7 Itxia 6 Malopez 21 5 Pompilos 5 Ausias8000 4 Alex90jm 3 New editor Fg Canovas 2 New editor Raimundo Pastor 2 Bonlector 1 New editor Luis Fatás 1 New editor Pedro J Pacheco 1

Results Most of the proposed goals have not been achieved. The number of places that have been pictured has been just 73 out of 372, just one fifth of them. The expected target was 297, four fifths. 716 pictures have been uploaded when 1,500 were expected. All the pictures uploaded can be found in https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_from_the_Spanish_Civil_ War_contest. Usage in projects has also been low. The number of distinct images used is 70, meaning that only 10 % of the images uploaded have been used, instead of 20 % as expected. The number of editors was better than it looks at first sight. Only 23 people contested but five of them were new editors. And that’s a lot, because this contest was not designed to attract new editors. In fact when we discussed the use of banners with WMF staff we made that point clear, that we were more interested in promoting to registered editors than to people that had never edited. But for some unknown reason new users came to participate.

The number of articles edited during this event has been 96 (the target was 200). Seven of those articles are new ones, all of them in Spanish: Aeródromo de El Toro, Aeródromo de Villar de la Libertad, Antiguo edificio de REVA y nave de ampliación, Búnqueres de Nules, Búnqueres del Cerro del Cerro del Aceitunillo command bunker, by ElBute. Aceitunillo, Hospital de sangre de los This is a Quality image. Corrales de los Garcías, Línea Inmediata a Valencia. On the other hand, articles were improved in eight languages, doubling our expectations. Anyway the number of bytes added is a bit more of a third that we expected.

This contest had an impact in terms of new categories in Commons. 52 are directly related to items pictured: Air raid shelter in Plaza Séneca, Alicante; Alamillo bunkers; Army barracks in ; Barracas civil war airfield; Baterías Ares; Bunker 2 in Dehesa de Navalcarbón; Bunker 3 in Dehesa de Navalcarbón; Bunker 3 in Nules; Bunker 5 in Dehesa de Navalcarbón; Bunker of Location of the items that were pictured. Albendín; Búnquer de observación del alto de Herragudo; Campus El Milán, University of Oviedo; Carrer de Xàtiva 23 (València); Casa Gràcia; Casería del Corregidor; Castle of Denia air raid shelter; Cervantes School, Riba-roja de Túria; Císcar 61, València; Comandancia Naval, Málaga; El Aceitunillo bunkers; El Toro civil war airfield; Former artillery site al El Saler; Former FARE Hospital at El Vedat; Former Telefónica building, Barcelona; Former field hospital; Germans Bou Avenue electrical substation; ammunitions magazine; Hermandad del Refugio; Hotel Alfonso IX, Cáceres; Hotel María Cristina, Donostia-San Sebastián; Hotel Voramar, Benicàssim; La Pañoleta; La Patada hill trenches; Los Almedros detention camp; Los Corrales de los Garcías Civil War field hospital; Machine gun nests in Toledo Bridge, Madrid; Manuel-l'Énova station; Masadas Blancas Eastern bunker; Masía de la Virgen, Segorbe; Our Lady of Tejeda monastery, Garaballa; Plaça del Teatre; Railway bridge over the Mijares between Vila-real and Almassora; Refugi antiaeri del Jardí de la Infància (Girona); REVA building at Venta del Poyo; Sindicato Agrícola de San José, Almassora; T4 group of trenches, Viver; T5 group of trenches, Viver; Torre del Doctor Andreu, av. Tibidabo 17-19 (Barcelona); Trenches at Les Rodanes; Valdelascasas; Villa Amparo, ; and Villar de la Libertad airfield. In addition another ten categories were created to classify those categories, their items or other items uploaded in the contest: Baterías La Bailadora; Baterías Montefaro; Baterías Punta Segaño; Buildings in Almassora; Bunker 6 in Dehesa de Navalcarbón; Bunkers in Luque (Córdoba); Hotel Palace, València; Hotel Reina Victoria, Valencia; Les Rodanes; and Passeig Marítim Pilar Coloma.

The geographical distribution of proposed and pictured items is as follows: Proposed Picture Autonomous Proposed Pictured Province % % items d items community items items Almería 5 0 0 % Cádiz 7 0 0 % Córdoba 5 4 80 % Granada 9 0 0 % 46 6 13 % Huelva 2 0 0 % Jaén 3 0 0 % Málaga 3 1 33 % Seville 12 1 8 % Huesca 6 0 0 % Teruel 7 0 0 % Aragon 22 4 18 % Zaragoza 9 4 44 % Asturias 18 1 6 % Asturias 18 1 6 % Balearic Is. 8 3 38 % Balearic Is. 8 3 38 % Las Palmas 1 0 0 % Canary Is. 4 0 0 % Santa Cruz 3 0 0 % Cantabria 7 0 0 % Cantabria 7 0 0 % Albacete 8 0 0 % Ciudad Real 1 0 0 % Castile-La Cuenca 3 1 33 % 29 2 7 % Mancha Guadalajara 5 0 0 % Toledo 12 1 8 % Ávila 1 0 0 % Burgos 5 0 0 % León 3 0 0 % Castile and 16 0 0 % Palencia 1 0 0 % León Salamanca 2 0 0 % Segovia 1 0 0 % Soria 1 0 0 % Valladolid 2 0 0 % Zamora 0 0 NA Barcelona 27 9 33 % Gerona 8 1 13 % Catalonia 53 11 21 % Lérida 8 0 0 % Tarragona 10 1 10 % Ceuta 1 0 0 % Ceuta 1 0 0 % Badajoz 8 0 0 % 12 1 8 % Cáceres 4 1 25 % La Coruña 2 1 50 % Lugo 1 0 0 % Galicia 7 1 14 % Orense 1 0 0 % Pontevedra 3 0 0 % Madrid 63 11 17 % Madrid 63 11 17 % Melilla 1 0 0 % Melilla 1 0 0 % Murcia 13 0 0 % Murcia 13 0 0 % Navarre 1 0 0 % Navarre 1 0 0 % Rioja, La 3 1 33 % Rioja, La 3 1 33 % Alicante 11 3 27 % Land of Castellón 18 12 67 % 49 31 63 % Valencia Valencia 20 16 80 % Álava 4 0 0 % Basque Gipuzkoa 4 1 25 % 18 1 6 % Country Biscay 10 0 0 %

Twenty pictures that were uploaded for this contest have been considered Quality images by the community.

Organizer’s experience This project begun as a low cost alternative to the usual Wiki Loves contest. With the excuse of the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, I began to collect the names of places that were related to that conflict. They had to be easy to find and to access. It ruled out some places, for instance, the shelter under the Cibeles in Madrid is not on the list as there is no way to reach it without using heavy machinery. Other places were easy to locate but required walking for hours to reach them. They were also eliminated from the list. Some places should be very well known but when it came to their exact location, it was impossible to find. That happens with many government departments of the rebel government. They were scattered between Burgos, Vitoria, Bilbao, Santander and Valladolid. In which building was each ministry housed? Most of the times I just couldn’t find out. Timeframe restriction was also relevant. No Torre del Doctor Andreu, by Enric. During the Valley of the Fallen, for instance. Some war it housed the Soviet Consulate in premises were in use after the war, but the Barcelona. key question was if they had been used during the war. Some places were initially used as prisoner camps and later as detention camps for political prisoners, and political repression lasted for decades. Making this list was a very moving experience at times. Some users helped me with the list. The parts about Madrid, Catalonia and Andalusia were much improved by them. I also counted with some help from outside the Wikimedia community, such as César Salvo, from Villar del Arzobispo, and José Bercero, from Villafranca de los Barros. Local knowledge was needed to locate less known places. Once I had a list of places, I had to take a few decisions on what clues to give to the contestants. I gave them as precise a location as I could. In some cases directions were also given.

The contest in itself didn’t give any problems. I took part myself and also supported my wife driving her to some of the places. Again, it was a moving experience. I was very much impressed by the remains of the field hospital at Los Corrales de los Garcías. Wounded people were taken there for treatment. Surgeons worked on places built to keep livestock. I don’t think I’m the only one that learned a thing or two from this contest. One of the Former operating room at Los Corrales de los questions I had to answer was what to do if Garcías, by 19Tarrestnom65. the local bunker happens to be in private property, in the middle of an olive grove. My answer was something like “go there politely”. (My experience with orange groves is that you can enter them, go across and even eat an orange, as far as you don’t break anything, but local customs change from place to place). The same contestant later uploaded some pictures of a cortijo, some of them of the very patio of the cortijo. He had left his shyness behind. One of the lessons we learned was that no matter how strong an item seems to be, or how well hidden it is, there is a risk of its destruction. In some cases it was done intentionally after the war, like Hotel Colón that had been the headquarters of the PSUC in Barcelona. In other cases the loss has happened more recently, as in the case of the old bullring in Badajoz, were many Posición T4, Viver (what's left of it). people were killed in 1936. Less prominent places are lost too. We found that very little is left of T4 group of trenches in Viver. All aboveground structures have disappeared and only the entrance to the underground part remains. We didn’t dare to enter. While I expected the results to be better in numerical terms -and I am a bit disappointed for that reason- the experience as a whole has been very positive for me. As I said, it is a very moving subject and the meaning of the places came to my head many times. I very much remember when we went to La Pañoleta, where a column of miners was betrayed and decimated by the Guardia Civil. It is not the kind of place tourists flock to, it’s plainly ugly, but it’s full of meaning. Some people discovered the bunkers in their neighborhood. Aranjuez is well known for its palaces but I guess that very few people know its bunkers and battlefields, even those that live there. That’s not the case for the pupils of the Cervantes Primary School in Riba-roja, who have an air raid shelter on their playground, duly marked and fortunately unused for decades. I don’t know how exportable this experience is, but if it were possible I would very much recommend to try and organize something like this. Do not expect every place to be pictured, the pictures to be very nice, or the places to be monumental or even beautiful. But your efforts will be rewarded.

Luis Ulzurrun (B25es)