Spanish Civil War Bomb Found After Man, 97, Told Farm Owners He Remembered It Falling As Boy
This is the moment Civil Guard bomb experts detonate a Spanish Civil War explosive after a 97-year-old man remembered it falling on a farm and not going off when he was a young lad.
The elderly man, name not disclosed, was six years old when he saw a bomb fall on the farm in the municipality of Maella in the province of Zaragoza in the north-eastern Spanish region of Aragon.
Now 97 years old, the man reportedly told the owners of the property to be careful when he noticed them preparing to carry out building work, as he remembered the bomb falling there and not exploding.
The owners immediately informed the Civil Guard, and experts were sent to the farm.
Despite since being concreted over, bomb experts found the hidden bomb almost exactly where the elderly man had described.
Using a metal detector to pinpoint its exact location, Civil Guard experts unearthed the explosive and later detonated it in a safe location on Monday, 10th January.
During a five-month period in 1938, General Franco’s Aviacion Nacional (Nationalist Air Force) dropped around 4,000 kilogrammes (630 stones) of explosives on Maella every day.
The unexploded bomb was confirmed to be a 50-kilogramme ‘torpedin’ explosive used by the Italian Aviazione Legionaria (Legionary Air Force), set up in 1936 to provide support to Franco’s Nationalists after the Spanish coup of July that year.
During 2021, the Spanish authorities neutralised a total of 145 explosive devices from the Civil War, most of them found in the provinces of Teruel, Zaragoza, and Huesca, and the most common being artillery projectiles weighing between three and 45 kilogrammes, such as hand grenades, mortar grenades and aircraft bombs.
