Cristina Hodgson
BOMB disposal experts have detonated a mortar grenade from the Spanish Civil War that was found at the mouth of the Guadalmedina river in Malaga city.
The artefact was found yesterday afternoon, Tuesday February 28, by a fisherman who was in the area.
Police explosives specialists from the TEDAX squad were notified and swiftly arrived at the scene of the discovery to investigate.
Due to the advanced state of deterioration of the grenade, making moving it elsewhere too dangerous, the explosives specialists opted to carry out a controlled detonation on the spot.
Other explosives from the Civil War in Malaga
This isn’t the first time that explosives from the Civil War have been found in the province of Malaga.
In April last year, the TEDAX squad were called in to intervene with the removal or detonation on three different occasions; one of them in the capital and two others in the town of Torremolinos.
In Malaga city, a hand grenade known as ‘La imparcial’—so called because it was equally unsafe to handle for either side in the conflict—was found in the Puerto de la Torre neighbourhood, specifically in the Arroyo de Casasola,
The other two devices, an M31 pineapple fragmentation hand grenade and a mortar shell used during the Spanish Civil War, were found in Torremolinos during the clearing of a building site.
More surprising was the discovery of several World War II explosives that were uncovered in 2019 among potatoes in a food processing plant in the province of Granada.
The Guardia Civil was alerted by the manager of the company because, after emptying a sack of potatoes into the peeling machine, employees found three shell fuses and the body of a hand grenade.
Incredibly, the find was the second time in the space of a month that a shell fuse was found in the same factory.
It is believed that the artefacts came from France, from the Somme region.
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