tour:
“In 1927, the Instituto Geográfico y Catastral agreed to carry out the emergency surveying of 2,133,000 hectares and to hand over to the Confederation the survey data at a scale of 1:25 000, with contour lines at 10 metre intervals. At the same time, the Depósito de Guerra agreed to complete within 12 months a total of fourteen map sheets covering the Pyrenees area. There was still one urgent need to be attended to. In partially irrigable zones, for various reasons, a detailed parcel map of rustic land was required, but was lacking in the greater part of the basin. To obtain one, in 1927, an innovative solution was opted for: the contracting of an aerial photogrammetric survey to be carried out by the Compañía Española de Trabajos Fotogramétricos Aéreos - CETFA (Spanish Company for Aerial Photogrammetric Work).
In addition to these measures and agreements, those in charge of the Confederation decided it ought to have a cartographic service of its own. The service was started with a modest budget and limited personnel: one geographical engineer in charge of the service, an assistant engineer, four topographers, a draughtsman and an expert in photography. Direction was entrusted to the geographical engineer Carlos Valentí Dordá.
However, between 1928 and 1936, the cartographic service of the Ebro Hydrographic Confederation became an important cartographic centre. At the moment of the military coup, the Confederation boasted a workshop for photography and reprojection, a draughting room, a section for making copies of plans on Ozalid paper equipped with two machines and a complete cartographic archive. The archive contained, at that time, a collection of 169 sheets of the 1:50 000 scale Topographical Map of Spain, which covered practically all the Ebro Basin; a collection of the manuscript data of this map on vegetable paper at 1:25 000 scale, with contour lines at 10 metre intervals, as well as a collection of 22,000 aerial photographs taken between the years 1928 and 1930, with the corresponding photoplans at 1:10 000 scale, which covered an area of 1,343,000 hectares of the central zone of the Ebro Valley. Three aspects are worthy of special note in this impressive cartographic documentation: its coverage, its up-to-dateness, and its exclusiveness. In fact, this collection covered practically the entire Ebro Valley, precisely the zone in which the most important battles of the Civil War would be fought. Furthermore, the photoplans produced by the Compañía Española de Trabajos Fotogramétricos Aéreos (Spanish Company for Aerial Photogrammetric Work) were only to be found in Zaragoza, in the archives of this cartographic service.”
—THE CARTOGRAPHIC SERVICE OF THE EBRO HYDROGRAPHIC CONFEDERATION DURING THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
Carme Montaner1, Francesc Nadal2 and Luis Urteaga2
1Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya, 2Universitat de Barcelona
THE CARTOGRAPHIC SERVICE OF THE EBRO HYDROGRAPHIC CONFEDERATION DURING THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
Carme Montaner1, Francesc Nadal2 and Luis Urteaga2
1Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya, 2Universitat de Barcelona
