The offensive towards Valencia – or Battle of Levant – took place between April 23 and July 25, 1938, when it was interrupted when the Battle of the Ebro began.
In its advance towards Segorbe and Sagunto to reach Valencia and, thus, isolate Madrid from the rest of the Republic and avoid its supply through the ports of the Levant, the revolted Army wanted to cow the population. Not without reason, our civil war was the stage where the first population bombings were carried out as an element of punishment and terror towards the civilian population.
At dawn on Monday, June 6, the rebel command launched a first bombardment on the homes in the urban center of Soneja, which at that time had become a military target. Airplanes coming from the west launched dozens of projectiles that linearly swept several corrals and houses in their advance towards the east. But the population had already begun to dig numerous underground shelters in various places (sloping streets, embankments near the town or the crypt of the church, among others), working in teams or through brigades, anticipating each time nearest fatality possible air strikes.
Until that day, sentries had not yet been posted on top of the bell tower to warn the neighborhood of the proximity of planes ringing the Miquela, the largest of all the bells. At 6 o'clock in the morning the first bombs fell on the town, and from that day there was no shortage of sentries in the bell tower. The population, for its part, hastened to finish the shelters that had been started. On June 15, at the same time that the towns closest to the city of Castelló de la Plana – which had just been taken – were being taken by the raised army, their aviation bombarded from Teruel the road leading to Sagunto, in support of the ground troops, and with her, again, Soneja.
In 2022 the company Ánima Arquitectura proceeded to identify, prospect with georadar and catalog the hidden vestiges of different shelters, the location of which we offer here.
[Information taken from Rodríguez and Rodríguez, M.-À. (2019). "Soneja 1936-1939: war rear, post-war concentration camp (Part I)". Bulletin of the Institute of Culture Alt Palancia, 25, p. 149-180. Segorbe (Castelló): Institute of Culture Alt Palancia. Available at the Soneja Municipal Library. ]
