The Fascist's Aerial Bombing of Barcelona

Barcelona was one of the first ever major cities to experience mass aerial bombardment. During the Spanish Civil War Mussolini's Italian air force launched an extensive aerial bombing campaign on the Spanish city in support of Franco's fascist forces.

The people of Barcelona responded by building over a thousand underground public air raid shelters (refugis aeris), These shelters helped to save thousands of civilian's lives. However the repeated waves of air strikes by the fascists on the city ended up killing over a thousand innocent civilians.

800 Days Under Bombs is an interactive map which shows where fascist bombs were dropped on the Catalan city. The map also shows the location of the air raid shelters built in response to the air attacks. The map uses data from Joan Villarroya i Font’s book 'Els bombardeigs de Barcelona durant la Guerra Civil 1936-1939'.

If you click on a bomb marker on the map you can view the date and time of when the bomb was dropped on the city.



You can also view an animated map of the fascist bombing campaign on Barcelona. Barcelona Sota Les Bombes provides an animated chronological account of when and where the fascists dropped bombs on the city. As the map plays dates and photos of the bombing are shown in the map sidebar and a running total updates to show the total number of people killed by the bombs during the air attacks.

The fascist aerial campaign against Barcelona was a war of terror aimed not at military targets but at innocent civilians. The campaign was condemned by other countries around the world. However only a few years later, during the Second World War, the tactic was used by both the Nazi and Allied forces.

Cool Walks in Barcelona

I have only ever visited Barcelona in the extreme heat of summer. Walking around the city has therefore always been combined with a constant search for shade and an attempt to avoid direct sunlight by walking as much as possible in the shadows of buildings. Unfortunately when I visited Barcelona the Cool Walks interactive map didn't exist.

Cool Walks is a new route-planning tool which can help you find walking routes across Barcelona which prioritize shady sidewalks and the locations of drinking fountains. Enter your starting point and destination into Cool Routes and it will show you a route which avoids direct sunlight as much as possible.

Cool Routes has a number of options for those who wish to avoid the sun while navigating Barcelona. For example you can enter the time of day that you will be walking so that the direction of building shadows will be taken into account when optimizing your cool route. You can then choose to find the 'shortest path' (Cool Routes won't look for shade and will just give you the quickest route), the 'shady path' (a route which tries to avoid the sun) or 'Vampire mode' (which will avoid sunlight at all costs). Cool Walks also knows the location of the city's drinking fountains. If you select the 'drinking fountain' option Cool Routes will attempt to show you a route which passes a fountain.

Mapping Internal Migration

Internal Migration in the City of Barcelona 2016 is a simple but effective visualization of where Barcelona residents moved to and from within the city in 2016. The map provides an overall scale of the numbers of people moving between Barcelona's different neighborhoods without giving the precise figures of how many people moved between each district.

The scaled markers on the map provides a rough overview of how many people moved into or out of each Barcelona neighborhood from elsewhere in the city. If you can switch between the incoming and outgoing internal migration views the markers automatically change to represent the numbers for the selected view. If you then hover over a neighborhood on the map flow-lines show all the other districts where residents moved to or from.

These flow-lines are scaled to show the number of residents who moved between the different neighborhoods. Some of the flow-lines have numbers attached, which presumably represent the number of residents who moved between the two connected neighborhoods. However not all the flow-lines are annotated with the number of residents. The scaled neighborhood markers on the map also don't give the precise numbers of internal migrants. When you hover over the neighborhood markers the neighborhood's name is revealed. It would be nice if the number of internal migrants (incoming or outgoing depending on the view) was also revealed when you hover over a marker.

The Internal Migration in the City of Barcelona 2016 map is therefore an effective visualization of the general size of internal migration between different neighborhoods in the city. However it isn't much use if you want to know the precise number of residents moving between different neighborhoods in Barcelona.


The US Migration Flow Map provides a nice example of how an internal migration flow map can provide the actual numbers of people moving between different areas.

The US Migration Flow Map, like the Barcelona map, uses scaled flow-lines to visualize the numbers of people moving between different states in the USA. The size of the flow-lines on the map is representative of the number of people moving between two states. However, unlike the Barcelona map, you can also hover over the lines to view the total number of people moving between the two states. You can also hover over a state on the map to view the total number of internal and external migrants.

Migration in Latvia is another internal migration map which allows you to hover over the flow-lines on the map to view the precise number of people moving between two regions. Hover over a selected region on the map and you can also view details on the total number of people who moved in and out of the region.

The Rent in Spain Falls Mainly Down the Drain

Renting an apartment in Madrid or Barcelona is becoming very difficult for anyone who isn't already rich or a high earner. Like many other cites in the developed world a number of factors have combined to price many people out of being able to afford to rent an apartment in Spain's two most populous cities.

Tell Me How Much You Can Afford and I'll Tell You Where to Live explains the problems of renting in Madrid and Barcelona. It also explores the reasons behind the high rents and then suggests some possible solutions. The article includes an interactive map which allows you to explore how much salary you need to rent in different neighborhoods in both cities. The map allows you to enter your monthly salary and the size of the apartment that you want to rent. The city's neighborhoods are then colored on the map to show the percentage of your salary that you would need to be able to rent in that area of the city.

The map also includes a timeline control which allows you to compare the current situation to previous years. Therefore if you are depressed by the current situation you can depress yourself further by sliding the years back to see how far back in time you would have to travel before you could afford to rent in Barcelona or Madrid.

The History of Barcelona Mapped

The Museo D'Historia de Barcelona has created an interactive map which shows how the Catalan capital has evolved over more than twenty centuries. The Carta Historica Barcelona allows you to view a series of maps showing the development of Barcelona from a small Roman military camp to the huge modern city that it is today.

The timeline at the bottom of the map allows you to view an historical map of the city for important dates throughout its history. The layer icon in the main map menu allows you to overlay the modern map of the city on top of any of the historical maps. Using this option you can see how the city has evolved over time and place the historical map within the context of the city today.

The historical maps themselves have been recreated from historical vintage maps of the city and appear to be have been made using the Mapnik map rendering software.

Smelly Maps of London & Barcelona

London Smellscapes (another version with darker map tiles) sets out to map the prevailing types of smells on London's streets. What is most amazing is that it does this by using Flickr photos. Or rather it manages to map the prevailing smells by using smell-related words tagged on Flickr photos.

The map colors London streets by four different smells, 'emissions', 'nature', 'food' and 'animals'. If you explore the map you will find that nature and animal related smells seem to occur predominantly in parks. Unsurprisingly London Zoo (in Regents Park) is completely dominated by animal smells.

Barcelona also has its own Barcelona Smellscape map. In Barcelona you'll find that the Parc de la Ciutadella is also full of animal related smells. That just might be because it is home to the city's zoo. La Rambla has a number of dominant smells along its length, including animal smells (presumably from all those caged birds), food smells (lovely al fresco dining) and emission smells (bloody cars).

You can learn more about how the four different smell categories were determined and how the map was created on the CartoDB blog.

16 Maps of Barcelona at Night

atNight is a series of maps exploring the night time landscape of Barcelona. Using data gathered from social media, picture sharing websites and different modes of transport the maps explore how Barcelona at night differs from the Barcelona of the day.

All the maps are static maps which have been made interactive using the Leaflet.js mapping platform. You can browse through each of the 16 maps using the map menu. Beneath the map is an explanation of the data used in each of the 16 views of Barcelona.

The maps use a variety of data sets to explore the landscape of Barcelona's night-life. These include data comparing taxis and bike movements during the night with their movements during the day. Other maps explore the location of Flickr and Instagram photos taken at night with those taken during the day.

The Barcelona Architecture Map

Carta Arqueologica is a Google Map of architecturally important buildings in Barcelona.

The map includes a great search engine, which allows you to search Barcelona's architecture by age and by type. Using the search options you can search by period, for example Roman, medieval or modern. You can also search by building type, for example, religious, military or habitat.

The individual footprints of building are displayed on the map. If you select a building on the map you can click-through to learn more about the building and its history (in Spanish).


Once you have discovered some architecturally important buildings to explore on the Carta Arqueologica map you can use the Big Time BCN map to find out out more about the building.

The Big Time BCN map colors Barcelona's buildings by age. When you click on many of the buildings on the map not only can you view the building's age but you can also view a photo of the building and a detailed account of the building's history and architecture.

The map is therefore a really useful tool for discovering more about the history of Barcelona's buildings & architecture and a great guide for visitors to the city who are interested in finding and visiting the city's oldest and most interesting buildings.

The History of Barcelona's Architecture

Big Time BCN has an interesting new approach to mapping the age of buildings.

Over the last two years there has been a growing trend in maps visualizing the age of buildings in cities around the world. You can now view maps visualizing the age of buildings for New York, Brooklyn, Moscow, Reykjavík, all of the Netherlands, all of the Netherlands - again, Ljubljana in Slovenia, Portland, Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit.

All these maps use a similar approach - shading building imprints to display the age of the city's buildings. The Big Time BCN map uses a similar approach, displaying older buildings in black and the newest buildings in white.

However the creators of the Big Time BCN map have had a little 'Eureka' moment that transforms their map from being just an interesting visualization of data into a useful guide for architects, lovers of old buildings and visitors to the city.

Many of the building age maps that I've listed above allow users to click on individual buildings to view the year of construction. The Big Time BCN map takes this interaction to the logical next step. When you click on many of the buildings on the map not only can you view the building's age but you can also view a photo of the building and a detailed account of the building's history and architecture.

The map is therefore a really useful tool for discovering more about the history of Barcelona's buildings & architecture and a great guide for visitors to the city who are interested in finding and visiting the city's oldest and most interesting buildings.

This level of interaction and information has obviously taken a huge amount of time to create. However it does make me think that many of the other building age maps could very simply add a Google Maps Street View layer to their building age visualizations.

Adding a Street View layer would allow users to actually view the buildings on the map using Google's interactive panoramic imagery. Whenever I visit one of these building age maps the first thing I do is start exploring where the city's oldest buildings are located. I'd love to be able to click on the older buildings on these maps and actually view the building using Street View.

Dronestagram is Instagram for Drones

Dronestagram is an Instagram type application for sharing aerial photos captured by drones. Users can post aerial pictures to Dronestagram and share their photos with the world.

Browsing Dronestagram is a fun way of exploring aerial views of the world. Each photo posted to Dronestagram is accompanied by a Google Map showing where the picture was taken. Hopefully in the future Dronestagram will introduce a world map displaying all the posted photos on one map.

Find Photogenic Locations with Google Maps

ShotHotspot is a great resource that helps both professional and amateur photographers find great locations to take photos.

The application uses data from sites like Flickr and Panoramio to analyse the most photogenic areas. ShotHotspot's Google Maps allows users to scout for locations around any location worldwide. It is possible to narrow down the area of search by drawing the area you are interested on the map. It is also possible to zoom in on a location and update the results shown by selecting the 'Search Visible Area'.

You can select any of the hotspots displayed on the map and preview the photo opportunities by viewing photographs of the location taken by other photographers which have been posted to Flickr or Panoramio.

Climbing Pic d'Anie on Google Maps

Climbing Pic d'Anie is another Neatline interactive map. This Google Map displays a series of photographs taken during an ascent of Pic d'Anie in the Pyrenees.

The map displays the route of the climb from the nearby small hamlet of Lescun to the summit. Photographs are indicated on the map by a small blue dot and a thin line. The line shows the direction of the viewpoint in each photo and a rough approximation of the photographer’s range of view.

Mapping Barcelona's Immigrant Communities

Barcelona Televisió has used Google Maps to show where the different immigrant communities live in Barcelona.

Radiografia de la Població Estrangera a Barcelona is a neat Google Map that allows you to explore the immigrant communities in each of the city's neighbourhoods and the concentration of different communities across the city.

Using a drop-down menu in the map sidebar it is possible to select individual countries to show a heat map of where immigrants from the chosen country have settled in Barcelona. Another drop-down menu allows the user to highlight a specific neighbourhood on the map.

Barcelona Shopping on Google Maps

Eixos.cat is a website cataloguing businesses and empty businesses in Barcelona. The Eixos.cat Google Map of businesses in Barcelona can be searched for a huge range of useful information.

The Shopping Catalogue part of the map allows users to search for stores by type of store and by location. The map also allows users to search for empty businesses and business property available for rent and sale. The Industry and Enterprises section of the map allows the user to search for industrial sectors in the city.

Eixos.cat has also built a number of other Google Maps that examine data about the breakdown of the commercial sectors in the city.

Barcelona's Mobile Friendly Websites Map

According to Google if smart-phone users have a poor mobile browsing experience 61% of them won't visit a website again. To coincide with the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, Google have partnered with the Barcelona City Council to create Barcelona Go Mobile.

For the initiative Google helped businesses and landmarks in Barcelona optimise their websites for mobile phones. The Barcelona Go Mobile Google Map is a guide to mobile friendly websites in the Catalan capital.

The map allows users to search and find mobile friendly websites via a number of categories (culture, hotels, restaurants etc). If you click on a marker you can view screenshots of the selected website before and after it was optimised for mobile browsing. You can also click on the screenshots to visit the selected location's mobile website.

Via: Technomaps