Josep Maria Castellví Viladegut

In the 1950s, scrap metal in Spain was in short supply, so metal from the shipwrecks near the coast acquired an unexpected monetary value. Objects we now think of as archaeologicalartefacts were at the time the resources upon which many families and businesses depended. The Ebro Sea became a hub for this underwater business. Along came dry suit divers and scuba divers or frogmen, attracted by the job opportunities. Their stories have become inseparable from the fascinating accounts of the ships they dismantled. Who were the people who risked their lives to recover rusty remains from the depths? And what did they find at the bottom of the sea?

In 1979 a fishing boat dragged a war plane from a depth of two hundred and seventy meters and deposited it on a shallow bottom near Tarragona. There it was said that at the end of the Spanish Civil War, during a raid on the city, a Legion Condor twin-engine nicknamed the “Granuja” had been shot down. The terrible memories of the bombings during that conflict returned to the memory of those who witnessed the events. But the process of documenting and identifying the submerged aircraft led to a surprising conclusion and forced a new line of investigation. Were those submerged remains really those of the “Granuja”?