Ciencia en el Madrid del “No Pasarán”. La protección de las colecciones de Historia Natural y el Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Naturales durante la Guerra Civil

The cultural and scientific buildings of Madrid were severely damaged by the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Madrid was a city besieged and bombed by the rebels. In the capital were the most important museums, the National Library and the main scientific and humanities institutions, where the most important researchers of the time worked. At the beginning of the war the confiscation of libraries and collections of natural sciences took place in palaces and buildings belonging to aristocrats, financiers, people opposed to the Republic and religious schools. The naturalists of the National Institute of Natural Sciences organized the conservation and protection of the biological collections, while bombs and howitzers fell on the scientific institutions of the republican zone.