Urban Ecology Under Fire: Water Supply in Madrid During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)

“Urban Ecology Under Fire”: Water

Supply in Madrid During the

Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)

Santiago Gorostiza (U.Coimbra), Hug March (IN3, UOC), David Saurí (UAB)

Paper published in Antipode (2015), 47(2):360-379, doi:10.1111/anti.12111

“Urban Ecology Under Fire”: Water Supply in Madrid During the Spanish Civil War

(1936-1939)

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WARNING!

This paper is not about WATER or about the ENVIRONMENT...


(1936-1939)

It is about the centrality of hidden URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE in

enabling urban life

And…

The importance of DEMOCRATIC CONTROL over infrastructre

management and production of knowledge to face moments of

CRISIS/STRESS/DISRUPTION.

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Some context...


(1936-1939)

• Collaborative and interdisciplinary research on historical geography and

environmental/infrastructure history

• Interest in understanding what can we learn from past crisis/events to

shed light on relevant debates around 21st century urban management.

E.g: public vs. private management of water

GOROSTIZA, Santiago; MARCH, Hug; SAURÍ, David: “Servicing Customers in Revolutionary Times: The Experience of the

Collectivized Barcelona Water Company during the Spanish Civil War”, Antipode, 2013, 45 (4), 908-925

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Premises


(1936-1939)

• Central role of water infrastructure in enabling urban life

• In periods of stress/disruption: the modern fetishism of urban infrastructure

is challenged. i.e. the hidden becomes apparent

• Role of human agency in sustaining and making resilient the complex

urban metabolism has been obliterated.

We investigate how the water company and its personnel coped with the

bombings of the city to avoid major disruptions in the water supply

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Case study

• Canal de Isabel II (1851): State-led initiative

• Enabled the expansion of modern Madrid and its Ensanche

• 2nd Spanish Republic (1931-1939): Canales del Lozoya

• Critical role during the Spanish Civil War

Theoretical framework (1): Political and Hazard

Geography

Water and WWII

London, 1939-1940

Singapour, 1942

Leningrad, 1941-1944

• “Geography serves above all to make war” (Lacoste 1976).

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(1936-1939)

• Blocking access to water produce “levels of damage that can overwhelm

whole communities or cripple aspects of everyday life” (Hewitt 1997:5)

•Environmental infrastructure as a target of war (e.g. capture of the Al-Furat

dam by Syrian rebels in 2013)

Since Madrid’s terrorist in 2004 the water utility stopped to hand out

detailed maps of the water infrastructure

• Analysis of the complex interactions between

infrastructure networks, technologies, and urban

spaces

• Moments of infrastructure failure are “perhaps

the most powerful way of really penetrating and

problematizing those very normalities of flow and

circulation” (Graham 2009a:3).

•Politics of well-known urban disruptions (e.g.

New Orleans 2005) of more hidden disruptions

(e.g. the day-to-day infrastructural in the Global

South)

Theoretical framework (2): Politics/geography of urban

infrastructure networks. Urban Political Ecology.

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(1936-1939)

Methodology


(1936-1939)

• Archival primary and secondary written

sources:

1. Official Bulletins and annual reports

2. Newspaper library research

3. Graphical sources

4. Political propaganda

5. Military history sources

6. Business management historical

sources

• Oral sources

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Outbreak of the war (1936) and Strategic role of regional

water infrastructures

Figure 1: Madrid region, November 1936. The Lozoya

water supply system and military operations. Sources:

• The water company

undergone reorganization

granting the workers

significant participation in the

management

• “critical importance to defense

water reservoirs”

• Role of workers in managing

water restrictions

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(1936-1939)

Urban Warfare and Water Supply in the Battle of Madrid

Figure 3: City of Madrid, November 1936. Urban

military operations and Canales del Lozoya water

supply system.

• Late 1936, early 1937: Siege of

Madrid

• Canales del Lozoya contributed

to the war effort in several ways:

- Repairing damaged

infrastructure

- Camouflage of critical water

infrastructures

- Providing knowledge of sewer

and water distributions networks:

1. Water disconnections

2. Water infrastructure as a tool of

urban warfare

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(1936-1939)

Adaptation, Reforms, and defeat (1939)


(1936-1939)

Legacy of the Canales de Lozoya

• Remarkable war management (no typhoid fevers, water did not lack)

• Several reforms implemented during the Republican management:

1. Unification of water networks (∆ efficiency)

2. Termination of permanent free-of-charge water contracts (∆ efficiency)

3. Rationalization of company structure (∆ efficiency)

4. Suppression of fixed payment for metering use (∆ equity)

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•After the Battle of Madrid war efforts shifted to other areas

•Victory of Franco in 1939 and restructuring of the Canal de Isabel II

Conclusions


(1936-1939)

1. Importance of organizations and human agency (Hazard Geography)

2. Democratic control over urban infrastructure (Urban Political Ecology)

3. Accumulated knowledge and experience of managers and workers (Labor Geography)

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Crucial role in enhancing infrastructure resilience

under periods of hardship and disturbing events

Lessons to be taken home


(1936-1939)

• Importance to focus not only on flows but also on infrastructure

• Critical role of (hidden) infrastructure in enabling modern urban

life

• Knowledge of the geography of infrastructure is relevant

• Importance of democratic control over key infrastructures: Who

controls infrastructure?

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Urban Ecology Under Fire: Water Supply in Madrid During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)

Environment

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