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Rifle Slits

camino-david

RIP 2020
Time of past OR future Camino
Caminos Frances (x4), Finisterre, Aragon, Via de la Plata, Portuguese 2011 -2015. Hospitalero 2015
This applies to all Caminos through NW Spain, especially Galacia.
Whilst walking through many villages on a Camino, you may notice horizontal slits in walls about head height. These slits are wider at the front than the back. These are rifle slits enabling the person inside the wall to have a good view up and down the path, whilst protecting the rifleman/woman inside from the enemy. A tragic reminder of the Civil War 80 years ago. When I was a youngster in England during WWII, they were a very familiar sight in any defensive position.
This Forum has covered just about every imaginable topic to do with the Camino, but I have never seen a mention about these wall slits.
 
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I've seen them in buildings built long before the civil war and wondered about them, too.
 
I did not see them. Could you post a photo?
Some time ago I asked about some curious ruined structures that can be seen in the route from Lepoeder to Ibañeta, in the final descent to the latter. They can (somewhat) be seen in Google Maps. A fellow forum member explained that they were part of a line of frontier bunkers built after the civil war, between 1939 and 1948, They were known as the "P line", for reasons that today are not clear.
The messages are into a discussion about "hobbit houses" (actually, wine cellars).
 
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For more in Spanish on Linea P see here.
 
mspath said:
For more in Spanish on Linea P see here.
Click to expand...

The Linea P, (Pirynees Line) is a fortification system built when Spanish Civil War ended. It was designed to protec Spanish border from a hypothetical invasion of the Allies when 2th WW finished. The Spanish Communist Party and many of their allies tried to involve the winners into toppling Franco´s polithical regime. In fact, the communist party´s militias invaded Spain again trying to provoke this invasion of the Allies, but were defeated. This is about Linea P.
Speaking about those horizontal slits in walls, the simple and less romathic truth is that it were make for stables/wharehouses aeration and /or to ease inserting straw, grain etc (Sometimes directly from a cart).
When those slits are make for defensive purposes, (loopholes, aspilleras in spanish) they are wider on the back that on the front, just for oposite purposes, to dificult the enteryng of bullets /shrapnel/ arrows in the darker inside, not knowin the attacker where the defenders are. And usually loopholes /rifle slits are made vertical, but in medieval castels is relatively easy to find other class of loopholes due the utilization of crossbows, and early firearms.
 

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In Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, a lot of old Amish barns have similar slits that werre used for aeration. But I suppose they might have be built for the highly secret Amish underground army.
 
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vlebe said:
pics pics please!
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In La Isla on the Norte, there are remains of trenches from the Civil War. Alongside is a detailed explanation board - otherwise you would not know what they were. Painful memories still for many in Spain.



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Tio Tel
 
This is not exactly on point, but this summer when Annie and I were walking the Ruta del Ebro, we came across some "machine gun nests" from Civil War days on the east side of the Ebro, before San Jaume de Enveja, I think it was. Like little forts, they sat there without much fanfare other than a sign announcing their identity. These reminders of the things we humans are capable of doing to each other always give me pause and make me realize how lucky we are to be walking caminos where those threats are not on our radar screen at all.
 
Camino Way markers in Bronze
The one from Galicia (the round) and the one from Castilla & Leon. Individually numbered and made by the same people that make the ones you see on your walk.
peregrina2000 said:
These reminders of the things we humans are capable of doing to each other always give me pause and make me realize how lucky we are to be walking caminos where those threats are not on our radar screen at all.
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So true. The area I do the vast majority of my walking (& where my house is) was battlefield 150 years ago during our civil war. It has been an area of many hours of contemplation for me over the years.

Of course, so much of Spain, and therefore many Camino routes, were battle grounds during the reconquista. Not too mention the downed Allied airmen who followed Camino routes out of occupied France during WWII into neutral Spain.

And can you imagine a walking pilgrimage into Jerusalem today? Starting from somewhere of a similar distance, like Cairo Egypt?
 
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