In terms of approaches to warfare, the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) has traditionally been seen as a transition between the First and Second World Wars. The idea is based on several reports written by designated observers from Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union. Certainly, some of the tactics and equipment of these armies made their first appearance during this conflict. However, this view raises several questions, as the experience and tactics observed in the Spanish battlefields often do not match those seen during the first phases of the Second World War. Were the innovations adopted by all sides and units? How did the new tactics influence the outcome of the conflict? Which tactics were tested and discarded for better ones? It is difficult to address these questions using only textual sources, given the particularities of this war. To improve our understanding of the evolution of warfare, we need to combine textual sources with archaeological data and spatial analysis, and integrate the knowledge. This study examines the assault on Republican positions at Fatarella Ridge during the last phase of the Battle of the Ebro (1938). In particular, the work explores, using spatial analysis of archaeological and textual sources, the level at which combined arms warfare was applied during the final months of the war. The use of an integrated methodology has allowed us to reconstruct the engagement and provides interesting insights into the evolution of tactics and fortification during this conflict.

The Sustainable Development Goals identified by the United Nations (2030 agenda) aim to promote sustainable cities, the need to safeguard cultural heritage, and the importance of quality education. Through different projects, the DIDPATRI research group at the University of Barcelona has developed didactic iconographic models on the historical and heritage dimension of cities. Comprehensible proposals have been made by developing unique techniques and using easily accessible technologies. The working hypothesis has focused on the idea that the models of didactic iconography promote the understanding of the history of the city, and this enables educational actions and contributes to the formation of quality citizenship, aware of the importance of heritage, with a view to the sustainability of urban environments themselves. The components and the layout of the iconographic prototypes tested have been developed with the available technological variables, but, above all, they focus on the conceptual organization of the iconographic contents to show. In other words, it places greater emphasis on techniques than on subsidiary technologies for change. The development of different projects has generated models of empirical effectiveness, which methodologically have contributed to improving, in the key of sustainability, the knowledge of historical urban environments and respect for heritage. The case studies considered in this work are two of the most emblematic developed by the DIDPATRI group: the archaeological site of El Born in Barcelona, and the medieval site of La Seu de Urgell, in the Catalan Pyrenees.

As the adage goes, ‘History is written by the winners’, and the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) is a example of how difficult it is to revert this process. Franco’s regime (1939–75) developed a range of narratives focused on a) the justification of the military rebellion against the democratically elected Second Republic government, b) the ‘damnatio memoriae’ of the Republican armed forces and c) the development of a collective guilt about the war. The transition from fascist dictatorship to democracy did not contest Francoist official discourse, and forged a ‘pact of oblivion’ based on the idea that Spanish society should look to the future and forget about the conflict: from personal memories to cultural heritage. One of the victims of this process of targeted forgetfulness was the Republican Air Force because it was an uncomfortable thorn in Francoist narratives. If the Republic was immersed in chaos and its army non-existent, then how did it manage to contest the skies against the most modern German and Italian aircraft? This work describes the activities developed by a long-term public archaeology project designed to rediscover the memory of the people that formed the Republican Air Force. This multifaceted initiative explored the materiality of air warfare through a combination of battlefield archaeology, educational research, museum exhibitions and community engagement. The results presented here are an example of how community-based archaeology projects can promote new critical narratives and rediscover silenced voices even after decades of heavily biased official history.

The Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations in the 2030 agenda point out the need to safeguard cultural heritage and the importance of convergence towards quality education. Through different museum projects (between 2010 and 2021), the DIDPATRI research group of the University of Barcelona has developed heritage museum models following sustainability parameters. The lines of work have been based on the use of previous museum cultures (integrating existing models) to respond to the needs of the present. The working hypotheses have raised the need to build a new social museography around the historical heritage, which can respond to the social demands of citizen education and sustainability. Museography should be oriented to formal and non-formal teaching-learning environments. Social museography must be based on the understanding of historical heritage in broad sectors of the public as well as on the participation of social agents, civil society, and the scientific community. Social museography must be based on the enhancement of heritage resources (tangible or intangible) in a way that is compatible with sustainable development options; it must be built with the support of protocols that consider production costs that are consistent with the economic and social resources available and with the reasonable use of complex technologies. This desire for research (on the paths of a new social museography) has been channeled through the development of research and transfer projects. The results obtained have generated empirical models that have contributed (methodologically) to the development of museographic options that respond to emerging demands in the environment of historical-archaeological heritage.

The importance of terrain in warfare has often encouraged an intense relation between military conflicts and the use of techniques designed to understand space. This is especially relevant since the modern era, where the engineers who built and assaulted city defenses recorded the events with diverse documentation, including reports, diagrams, and maps. A large number of these sources contain spatial and temporal information, but it is difficult to integrate them into a common research framework due to its heterogeneity. In this context, geographical information science provides the necessary tools to explore an interdisciplinary analysis of these military actions. This article proposes a new approach to the study of sieges using a spatiotemporal formal model capable of integrating cartography, archaeological, and textual primary sources and terrain information. Its main aim is to show how concrete research questions and hypotheses can be explored using a formal model of this type of historical events. The methodology is applied to a particular case study: the French–Spanish siege of Barcelona that occurred in 1714. The protagonists faithfully recorded the development of the action, providing essential information for the model. Besides, different authors depicted the event as the paradigm of a city siege. For this reason, the model is also used to explore why real actions deviated from theoretical guidelines, clearly defined in different manuals. We use this scenario to explore two issues: (a) why the attackers chose to assault a particular city sector and (b) the factors that explain the casualties of the besiegers. We conclude that we need methodological tools capable of integrating heterogeneous information to improve the understanding of siege warfare that affected not only military conflict but also the shape of European urban landscapes.

Historical illustrations give us hypothetical visual reconstructions of the past, which contribute to their interpretation, knowledge, and understanding. The progress of software for the design and production of images has optimized the possibilities of generating models of educational and understandable illustrations of spaces, facts, and concepts of the past. At the same time, promoting historical recreation activities allows us to obtain photographic and moving images of a historical nature, which can be integrated into image processing software. This paper describes the experience of the DIDPATRI group (Heritage Education, comprehensive museography and new technologies) the University of Barcelona with the Battle of the Ebro (Spanish Civil War, 1938), concerning the design of models/educational illustrations of the conflict. The developed actions show that, with well-defined criteria, support for recreation, and basic but highly educational software that is understandable and replicable, iconographic models can be obtained at a reasonable cost. The final result provides us with the possibility to understand the past in greater detail. The heritage of the conflict gives us the possibility to reflect, thereby directly affecting the formation of quality citizenship.