Abandoned Spain Map: 27 Maps of Bunkers, Ghosts and Lost Villages

More than 109,000 maps on MapIndex lie in Spain, and a striking share of them are about what emptied out. Huesca alone has a map of more than 200 deserted hamlets, each with its last census and the reason people left. The building boom left behind airports that no plane uses, reservoirs closed over whole villages, and the Civil War left numbered trenches in the hills around Madrid. Spain’s folklore is mapped as carefully: Moors said to guard treasure in Galician hillforts, a ghost in a Málaga newsroom and a taxi stopped by a light in Zamora in 1971.

P Line Bunker Map: 5,245 Franco-Era Posts in the Pyrenees

One machine-gun post was built to look like a house. Inside another sits a tank of water to cool the guns. The P Line, the fortification Franco ordered along the Pyrenees, fills this map with 5,245 objects, from the hills above Irun to the Empordà, each typed as bunker, light machine gun, anti-tank gun, mortar, observatory or tunnel. Its makers stay honest about doubt. Dozens of entries read “Búnker?”, one layer holds the finds that turned out not to be bunkers, and a note from 2015 admits the undergrowth kept them from getting close. Others give the defensive organisation and work number: “Obra 8, partly demolished”.

Objects

5,2454,374 points, 770 lines, 101 areas

Countries

SpainFranceAndorra

Made with

Google My Maps
Haunted Places in Spain Map: 220 Ghost Cases

Journalists at the Diario Sur in Málaga reported a ghost in their newsroom from 1939 to 1974 and named him Don Adrián. He is one of 220 cases on this map, each pinned with its date and story. On 23 August 1971 the first faces appeared in a house in Bélmez de la Moraleda. In Laroya on 16 June 1945, the map says, a blue ball came down from the sky, wrapped a girl in flames and left no burn. Many avoid booking room 510 of the Zaragoza hotel where a fire killed 80 people in 1979. A publisher’s office in Málaga had its poltergeist in June 1991. Belchite is known for recordings of voices said to date from the Civil War.

Objects

220220 points

Countries

Spain

Made with

Google My Maps
Drowned Village Map: Castellnou de Bassella Under Rialb

“Today, Saturday, is the last day to leave,” an anonymous villager says in a note dated 22 April 2000. “They won’t be long in knocking the village down.” This map gathers such voices and the author’s own photographs from the spring of 2000, when Castellnou de Bassella in Lleida was emptied and torn down for the Rialb reservoir. The village had 44 inhabitants in 1996, and the water has covered it since. One hostal had posters on its walls that had to be taken down in a hurry before the water came. The author says another reminds them of Mr Hulot’s holiday hotel. Someone else refused to be photographed: “Too much has been made of all this already.”

Objects

8484 points

Countries

Spain

Made with

Google My Maps
Madrid Front Map: 1,765 Civil War Trenches and Blockhouses

At La Retamosa two blockhouses still stand, one round and one pentagonal, beside a tunnel mouth and trenches “known as trenches of death, hunger and misery”. This survey of the front around Madrid marks 1,765 positions across the Sierra de Guadarrama and into Ávila and Segovia, with a terse field verdict on each: “Blockhouse partly concealed by undergrowth”, “In private hands. No remains visible”. An artillery piece called “Don Pepito” stood at Rocosa Baja. A camouflaged command post at Rocosa Alta bears the inscription of a San Quintín battalion. Position 31 is called one of the largest single surviving structures of the war in the sierra.

Objects

1,7651,765 points

Countries

Spain

Made with

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Cave Air Map: Oxygen and CO₂ in 469 Potholes

At 94 metres down the Avenc dels Arítjols, cavers measured 2.1 % oxygen in 2017, a tenth of what you breathe at the surface. This map keeps the gas readings of 469 caves and potholes, from the Basque mountains to the Catalan coast, entry by entry with date, depth and the caver who took them. Some read like a warning kept over years. Arítjols was measured again and again from 2016, down to an estimated 15 % carbon dioxide in January 2018, and its note warns that the dates run in reverse order. At the Abad Escarré pothole carbon dioxide stood at 2,220 ppm at 50 metres in 2010 and at 1.27 % at 65 metres in 2015. At other sites the note says only “breathable air at -17 metres” or “No problem”.

Objects

469467 points, 2 areas

Countries

SpainFranceBelgium

Made with

Google My Maps
Witch Trials Map: Where Spain Hanged Its Witches

In Laspaúles in Huesca, 24 women were hanged and then burned for witchcraft in 1593. The case is known from council manuscripts found in the church bell tower during a restoration in 2001. This map pins such cases across Spain and Andorra. It gives a count for each, not names: more than 30 women hanged in Osona between 1618 and 1622, 14 executed in Viladrau, six hanged and ten tortured in Andorra in 1604, 29 trials at Zugarramurdi in 1610. Trasmoz is noted as the only village in Spain officially cursed and excommunicated, with the excommunication never lifted.

Objects

1111 points

Countries

SpainAndorra

Made with

OpenStreetMap uMap
Radar Station Map: Spain's Air Defence and Their Mottos

Each air-surveillance station of the Spanish Air Force has a motto, a radio call sign and a range, and this map lists them all. EVA-1 at Calatayud answers to “siesta” and says “There is none better”. EVA-4 at Roses goes by “samba” and the motto “To be or not to be”. EVA-12 at Espinosa de los Monteros has “Where no one is, we are”. The others are “matador”, “bolero”, “kansas”, “necora” and “dragón”. EVA-22 on Lanzarote reaches 407 km. Three of the stations, the notes say, were installed by the United States Army.

Objects

1414 points

Countries

Spain

Made with

Google My Maps
Meteorite Map of Spain: 193 Falls and Fireballs in History

On 1 July 939, the map says, a fireball passed over Zamora, Castrojeriz and Belorado, dropping stones that started fires and killed people. The 193 points of this map run from a crater at Azuara, dated to 30 to 40 million years ago, through medieval chronicles to the falls recorded by the USGS. Averroes wrote of a 45-kilogram mass that fell near Córdoba in the 12th century and was forged into a sword. King Juan II of Castile saw a great flame cross the sky at Ciudad Rodrigo in 1433. Recent entries include Villalbeto de la Peña in 2004 and Puerto Lápice in 2007.

Objects

193193 points

Countries

Spain

Made with

Google My Maps
Abandoned Villages Map: 204 Ghost Hamlets of Huesca

Rocafort had six houses and 45 people in 1950, and neither water nor electricity ever reached it, only a school. This map of the empty settlements of Huesca, with photographs by Cristian Laglera, gives each of its 204 places its peak population and the reason it died. Reservoirs emptied some: Acín de Garzipollera was cleared for the Yesa dam in the early 1960s and now only its Romanesque church stands. Pelegrinyó is first recorded in 1090 and was looted in the 1970s and 80s. Its former neighbours still meet there every May. In Abiniella a spring has, by tradition, never run dry.

Objects

204204 points

Countries

Spain

Made with

Google My Maps
Moorish Legends Map: Treasures and Tunnels of Galicia

Villagers once pushed a rooster into a mine at one end of the Farelo hill, and it came out at Amarante. This map collects 540 such legends from the Deza district of Pontevedra, many tied to the hillforts said to have been home to “mouros”, the enchanted Moors of Galician lore. There are layers for treasures, spells, animals and places later Christianised. One hillfort smokes like a volcano until a curious visitor comes close. Another has a stone gate with its bolts. The “Covas da Forca” run off in seven directions. Each entry cites its source, often the 1989 county book A Comarca do Deza.

Objects

540540 points

Countries

Spain

Made with

Google My Maps
Ghost Airports Map: Spain's Unfinished Building Boom

Its only layer is called “Sand Castles”. This map collects the ruins of Spain’s property boom: the airports of Ciudad Real and Castellón, a “motorway to empty airport” at Corvera in Murcia, the unfinished Nou Mestalla stadium in Valencia and the City of Culture in Santiago. It includes the high-speed station at Yebes and the new town of Valdeluz built next to it. Seseña Nuevo is here, and so are golf resorts and housing estates from Manilva to Castro-Urdiales, Marina d’Or, a casino in San Roque and a Hilton.

Objects

4343 points

Countries

Spain

Made with

Google My Maps
Mining Cableway Map: The Lost Ropeways of El Bierzo

Aerial ropeways once carried iron ore and coal over the valleys of El Bierzo and Laciana in León, and this map traces 379 pieces of them: loading stations, tension stations, the lines between. The two cables of the Coto Wagner iron mines are here, and the ropeways of Minas Moro y Cía at Fabero ending at a loading point on the Ponferrada–Villablino railway at Matarrosa del Sil. At Páramo del Sil the note says the unloading stations were demolished. A cable from the Tormaleo mines ran down to the same railway.

Objects

379349 points, 30 lines

Countries

Spain

Made with

Google My Maps
Civil War Airfield Map: Catalonia's Surviving Shelters

At Vilajuïga in Girona, a stele marks where a Condor Legion Messerschmitt Bf 109 was shot down by a Republican Polikarpov I-15 in what the map calls the last air combat of the Civil War. This map follows the Republican airfields of Girona and Barcelona shelter by shelter and tells you which ones you can still enter. Each of its 120 entries ends with a verdict: ACCESIBLE, INUNDADO (flooded), COLGADO, PRIVADO. Celrà alone has seven shelters and a powder magazine. At Vilajuïga a masia served as the airfield’s hospital and another as its guardhouse.

Objects

120120 points

Countries

Spain

Made with

Google My Maps
Galicia Place Names Map: 20,807 Castilian Spellings

La Coruña, Villajuán, Puerto del Son: this map lists how 20,807 Galician places were spelled in Castilian, with the official Galician name in brackets beside each. Its maker documents every spelling with sources: the regional bulletin of 2000, historical maps of the national survey, the censuses of 1970 and 1981. Many notes are tiny corrections, such as “In the 1970 census it appears without the accent”. Others follow a name across the records: Regodoeijo in the censuses and Regodeijo at the statistics office, for the hamlet now officially O Rego do Eixo.

Objects

20,80720,807 points

Countries

SpainPortugal

Made with

Google My Maps
Megalith Map: 2,669 Dolmens and Stone Circles of Navarre

Each of the 2,669 points has a catalogue code such as 31-01-01-01 and a line of data: megalithic zone, municipality, type, name and map sheet. The first is the Añoenea soroa dolmen at Goizueta. This is the prehistory of Navarre counted monument by monument, from dolmens to burial mounds and cromlechs, the small stone circles of the Basque hills. Many carry Basque names, numbered when a hill has several, such as Burninburuko lepoa 1 or Altzanburu 1 ekialde.

Objects

2,6692,668 points, 1 line

Countries

SpainFrance

Made with

Google My Maps
Satellite Station Map: Spain's Dishes, US Bases and the CNI

At Gorramendi in Navarre, the US Army’s satellite station has been dismantled and only the bases of its giant antennas remain. This map runs through 28 earth stations and what became of them. The US station at Santos de la Humosa is now an airsoft field. The one at Ferreríes on Menorca was abandoned in 1994. Telefónica’s stations at Buitrago, Carmona and Villafranca del Penedès stand disused. Fresnedillas belongs to the CNI, Spain’s intelligence service, and the note says only: “No data on its use.” The observatory at Yebes appears as the “Astrological Centre”.

Objects

2828 points

Countries

Spain

Made with

Google My Maps
UFO Map of Zamora: 85 Sightings Since 1950

On 26 August 1971 a taxi driver near Nuez de Aliste saw a sphere a metre and a half across pass two metres over the road, and his engine died. Four days earlier, on the same road, a yellow light came down in front of a taxi with a red one inside it. This map records 85 sightings in the province of Zamora, each with its date, type and description. Three round objects “shaped like a sponge cake” flew in formation over a street in Zamora in 1952. In 1968 something drew circles over the bullring. In 1971 a bluish-green light near Alcañices burned the stubble.

Objects

9999 points

Countries

Spain

Made with

Google My Maps
Earthquake Map of Spain: The Deadliest Since 1504

The earthquake of Christmas Day 1884 at Arenas del Rey in Granada killed 839 people and destroyed 4,400 buildings, with 13,000 more damaged. This short map pins the deadliest earthquakes of the Iberian Peninsula with their date, intensity, magnitude and toll. Carmona lost 32 people in 1504. At Alhaurín el Grande in 1680, 70 died and a fifth of the houses in Málaga were destroyed. The quake off Cabo de San Vicente in 1755 raised a tsunami of almost 15 metres. Another there in February 1969 left 18 houses in Huelva uninhabitable.

Objects

1010 points

Countries

Spain

Made with

Google My Maps
Castle Map: 5,547 Strongholds of the Crown of Aragon

The kingdom of Aragon once reached from Catalonia to Sardinia, Sicily and the duchy of Athens, and this map follows its castles all the way: 5,547 of them, a layer for each realm. One layer is kept for the castles of Catalonia that have disappeared. The notes are terse and dated: “11th century, remains in a house”, “10th century, Arab”, “13th century, but of Roman origin”. Several bear the remark “drone done”, the maker’s tick that they have photographed it from the air.

Objects

5,5475,547 points

Countries

SpainItalyFranceand 12 more

Made with

Google My Maps
Unfinished Railway Map: The Santander–Mediterranean Line

The railway from Santander to the Mediterranean was never finished, and this map draws both the part that was built and the “route never executed”. Its 93 objects count off the tunnels one by one: El Morrito, 43 metres, El Morro, 263, El Empeñadiro, 130, each with a link to the maker’s photographs. Then comes the tunnel of La Engaña, 6,976 metres long, 8 wide and 6.5 high, driven under the Cantabrian mountains for trains that never ran through it. The track bed beyond is marked as a greenway.

Objects

9383 points, 10 lines

Countries

Spain

Made with

Google My Maps
Petroglyph Map: Rock Carvings Among Wind Turbines

On Monte Acibal in Pontevedra, someone surveyed the granite for prehistoric carvings and laid the finds over a wind farm. One layer holds the turbines, another the power line, another a 200-metre buffer around each machine. The petroglyphs are numbered and measured: a tetraskelion on a ridge, seen best at sunset; three cup marks of about 12 centimetres “next to one of the work tracks”; a double basin facing the western horizon. Green marks the ones reported to the heritage office. A last layer lists the “crosses” that office set aside as natural erosion.

Objects

136128 points, 7 lines, 1 area

Countries

Spain

Made with

Google My Maps
Catalan Legends Map: 604 Tales Where They Happened

A lady at Florejacs gave each suitor an enchanted flower that turned him into another flower in her garden. A rich lady of Tous ate nothing but lamb marrow, lost everything, was given bread with nuts as a beggar, and said that had she known it was so good she would still be the lady of Tous. This map places 604 such legends where they are set, from the Devil’s Bridge to Cavall Bernat. In Girona in 1285, flies poured out of a saint’s tomb and drove off the besieging French army.

Objects

604604 points

Countries

SpainFranceItalyand 1 more

Made with

Google My Maps
Pirate Coast Map: Almería's Watchtowers Against Corsairs

Construction of Adra’s walls began in 1505, under Queen Juana, to protect the town from pirate and Berber attacks. This map by Francisco Guillén Rojas follows the defences built against them along the coast of Almería between the 15th and 19th centuries, tower by tower. Many survive only as a name: “Disappeared. Bare beach”, “No remains today”, “Approximate position”. The castle at Cuevas del Almanzora carries the year it was attacked, 1573.

Objects

4645 points, 1 area

Countries

Spain

Made with

Google My Maps
Sundial Map of Galicia: 3,846 Dials, Lost and Found

A sundial at Culleredo was lost when its manor house was moved to make room for the extension of A Coruña’s airport. The census of Galician sundials notes such fates for each of its 3,846 entries: missing, unverified, suspected, “unborn”, on show or for sale in an antique shop. Every dial has a code by province and municipality, such as C 32/12. The notes are the work of patient checking. A bracket on a church at Carballo is marked “suspicious bracket”, and a new dial is entered as the one “that replaces the vanished one”.

Objects

3,8463,846 points

Countries

SpainPortugal

Made with

Google My Maps
Fake Street Sign Map: Córdoba's Pirate Signs

“I am lost”, “You are not here”, “This wasn’t the way”: from May 2010, unofficial street signs began to appear in the old town of Córdoba, and this map pins 47 of them where they hung. Others read “Emergency exit”, “No going back”, “Ten minutes late” and “El quinto pino”, the Spanish for the back of beyond. Several are marked “Sign disappeared (photo provided)”, so the map is now the record of a joke the city has partly taken down.

Objects

4747 points

Countries

Spain

Made with

Google My Maps
La Palma Eruption Map: The 2021 Volcano Day by Day

At midnight on 28 September 2021 the lava from La Palma reached the sea over the cliffs of Tazacorte. A day later a CSIC volcanologist reported that it had built a low island more than half a kilometre wide. This map follows the eruption through dated news reports placed on the lava itself. A new vent opened. The volcano stopped for a few hours, and experts warned that it was not over. One report has 46 million cubic metres of magma emitted after eight days, more than Teneguía in 1971. Polygons show the area covered on 1 and 12 October.

Objects

4037 points, 3 areas

Countries

Spain

Made with

Google My Maps
Optical Telegraph Map: The Towers That Signalled Madrid

Before the electric telegraph, messages crossed Spain from tower to tower by sight, and this map follows those lines across 440 objects. The civil line from Madrid to Irun runs out through Aravaca, Las Rozas and the pass of Guadarrama. A military line from Montjuïc to Lleida had 24 towers. At its centre stands the tower in the Retiro, called the first electrical school of Spain: abandoned now, the map says, after 170 years, and put forward as a candidate for UNESCO.

Objects

440380 points, 60 lines

Countries

Spain

Made with

Google My Maps

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