Description
Throughout the municipality of Lopera you can find numerous traces of the Spanish Civil War, since in the surroundings of the town the dividing line between the Franco and Republican sides was located, popularly known as the Andújar front.In particular, you can visit two important machine gun nests next to the Puente del Arroyo Salado, in the Las Esperillas area, popularly known as “trenches”, which are made up of reinforced concrete blocks, criss-crossed iron and small pieces of stone. These fearsome machine gun nests belonged to the national side and were used as surveillance posts. The truth is that they did not enter into battle, so they are in a very good state of conservation and that is why, together with the surrounding spaces, they have been regularly used for the recreation of the Battle of Lopera. The first machine gun nest is located on completely flat terrain, about 2.5 kilometers from the town center. Its structure takes on the shape of an “S”, it has a height of 2 meters, more than twenty holes for the installation of the different machine guns, small holes in the upper part for the placement of rifles and automatic weapons, and interior areas for storing weapons and ammunition. The other machine gun nest was located about a hundred meters away from the previous one (further from the road) and was built on a higher slope. Its surface consists of two small stairs, with three and two steps respectively, provided with landings. Its structure takes on the shape of an “L” and also ends in a semicircle. For the rest, it also has holes for locating machine guns, upper holes for rifles and interior spaces for storing ammunition.
