| Popis: |
The first "scientific" map of the Western Sahara was made by the Geographical Service of the Spanish Army between 1943 and 1949, which thereby recovered a leading role in cartography following allocation of work on the National Topographical Map of Spain to a civilian body from 1870. It also represented an opportunity to mitigate the isolation of the Franco dictatorship, by linking its creation with the 1:1,000,000 international map.Making it involved going over the desert inch by inch, since other means had proved unusable: because Spain's isolation made it impossible to buy film for a photogrammetric flight, because of the distortions caused to theodolites and sights by the atmosphere and light refraction, and because of the mechanical action of dust in topographical instruments. In the desert, particularly harsh in the “hamada” and Tiris areas, the selfless help of the Saharawis was crucial for the achievement of the cartographic project. Through poetic games which precisely depict desert landscapes, they could call on a mental map which was essential both on topographical survey trips and during the office meetings dedicated to the transcription on the map of their place names and of geographical features generic names. |
