AN ESSENTIAL VOLUME

Artillery in the 20th century and planes downed in the Pitiüses during World War II It is a work that combines the precision of the meticulous researcher with the narrative sensitivity of someone who deeply knows the territory it describes.. Pere Vilas Gil, one of the strongest voices in Pitiusan historiography, offers here an essential volume that illuminates a sometimes forgotten chapter of island history: the military presence and the aerial episodes that marked the daily life of the islands throughout the 20th century.

The first part of the book traces an exhaustive tour of the evolution of artillery in Ibiza and Formentera.. From the detachments linked to Mallorca in the 16th century to the complex network of coastal batteries, anti-aircraft and field units that, especially during the Civil War and World War II, They configured the defense of the archipelago. Vilàs reconstructs with documentary rigor—more than two thousand files consulted—the location, function, transformations and final destination of each battery, revealing not only its military dimension, but also its territorial impact, political and human.

The second part of the volume breathes like a living chronicle. It brings together six articles originally published between 2005 y 2007, in which the author narrates episodes featuring military planes that flew over or fell in the Pitiusas during the Second World War. Forced landings, unexpected combats over the sky of Vila, crews rescued by local fishermen, wounded survivors treated in clinics of the time... They are stories that combine precise documentation with a human perspective capable of transmitting confusion, the fear and solidarity that marked those moments.

With this book, Pere Vilas Gil reaffirms its role as an essential chronicler of the islands' contemporary past. The work is, at the same time, a consultation instrument, an exercise in memory and a discreet tribute to all people—military, civilians, testimonies—that, without knowing it, They were part of a global episode in history.