Italian Mapmakers in the Spanish Civil War (1937–1939)

Abstract

ABSTRACT During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), the Italian government gave firm cartographic support to the forces of General Francisco Franco. In the first phase, they undertook to engrave and print in Italy a significant collection of military maps urgently needed by the Francoist army. Later, from May 1937, the Italian High Command sent to Spain a cartographic unit, the Sezione Topocartografica, that eventually printed more than half a million maps at several different scales. The Italians effectively redesigned the Mapa topográfico de España at the 1:50 000 scale and selectively edited its topographical content to obtain the road map at the 1:200 000 scale.