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The history of the ground: eighty years of aerial photographs

A parcel has a memory and aerial photography keeps it. Since 1945 there have been official flights over all of Spain every ten or fifteen years, and since 2004 every two or three. Comparing the same frame decade by decade tells what no document records: what was there before the house.

The flights

• 1945–46 and 1956–57, the American flights: all of Spain in black and white; in the Basque Country, GeoEuskadi also has 1945 at good resolution.
• 1973–86, Interministerial, and 1981–86, National: the Spain of industrialisation and industrial estates.
• 1997–2003, SIGPAC and since 2004, PNOA: colour, high resolution, every two or three years.

All of them are in the IGN comparator and in the regional viewers, free.

What to look for

• Fills: a field with a hollow or a stream in 1956 that in 1984 is a flat platform and in 2001 a block of flats. The fill may be clean earth or rubble and waste; the soils inventory and the deed should say. Contaminated soils →
• Extraction: quarries and gravel pits since filled; the walls and floor can be made out in the old photo.
• Industry: sheds, chimneys, ponds, railway sidings, wharves. A shed present since 1945 on the parcel of the "industrial loft" listing is a question for the soils law.
• Streams and marshes: a brook that disappears between two flights has not stopped existing; it is piped underneath. Cross-check with flood zones →
• The surroundings within 150 m: what was next door — a landfill, a factory, a tank — and can no longer be seen.

How a PropVer report reads it

Every report carries seven 600 m crops centred on the parcel (1945, 1956, 1984, 1991, 2001, 2012, 2025) with the outline marked, and a written, dated interpretation — flagged as interpretation, not record — describing the sequence: what the land was used for in each flight, when the current building appears, whether there are traces of fill, extraction or industry on the parcel and within 150 m. The interpretation is reviewed by hand before delivery.

Limits

An aerial photograph does not see underground and does not distinguish a clean fill from a dirty one; it locates the question, it does not answer it. And 1945 resolution is measured in metres: a small workshop may not show.

Updated 2026-10-23.