Before Mariupol, before Gaza, before Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and the Blitz, there was Guernica. The Basque town in northern Spain became synonymous with state brutality when Guernica was bombed in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War – an unprecedented air raid on a densely populated city that shocked the global conscience and inspired The most famous work of Pablo Picasso. Guernica.
It’s an odd thing for a famous place to see an atrocity happen, but tourists and locals alike don’t seem too worried. GuernicaThe painting is an abstract depiction of civilian suffering, and tourists have no problem posing in front of it. The small town of Guernica is the center of Basque culture. For the Basques, whom they call Guernica, the violence that moved Picasso nearly a century ago is just one chapter in a long history of their quest for freedom.
Long before the Roman Empire or even the Celtic civilization, Basque was spoken by people along the Bay of Biscay, a language with no known kin. Empires rose and fell, but the Basque Country retained its unique culture and laws. Since the Middle Ages, Spanish monarchs have sworn to uphold Basque tradition under a sacred tree in Guernica.
“This is a republic; one of the privileges [Basques] John Adams, the founding father of the United States, wrote in 1786: “One of the most insistent things we insist upon is that there should be no king. Another is that every new lord, on accession to the throne, should enter the country in person with one leg bare, and swore an oath to uphold the prerogatives of the lord.
More than a century of Spanish revolution and repression gradually eroded Basque autonomy. Then, in July 1936, pro-fascist general Francisco Franco launched a rebellion against the Spanish Third Republic. In an effort to win over the Basques, the embattled Republicans quickly restored autonomy to the region. In April 1937, Guernica became the last pro-Republican neighborhood between Franco’s troops and the main city of Bilbao. With German and Italian air support, Franco captured the town.
“Guernica, the oldest town in the Basque Country and the center of its cultural tradition, was completely destroyed by an insurgent air strike yesterday afternoon,” said British war correspondent George Steele, the day after the first wave of bombers struck. Report. “In the form of its execution and the scale of the damage it caused, as in the choice of its targets, the raid on Guernica is unparalleled in military history.”
“Guernica is not a military target,” Steele continued. “The purpose of the bombing appears to be to demoralize the civilian population and destroy the cradle of the Basque race.”
Still’s report shocked Picasso, who was commissioned by the Spanish Republic to exhibit at the Paris World’s Fair. He gave up his previous plan and started painting Guernica Within a few weeks. Artists’ dramatic response to the tragedy – which was controversial at the time, as the World’s Fair was supposed to be a feel-good cultural exhibition – was shown in photographs of dead children and propaganda about Franco’s cruelty next to the movie.
What was once “unparalleled” quickly becomes the norm. After the attack on Guernica, the Imperial Japanese Army launched a massive invasion of Shanghai. (A photo of a Chinese boy among the rubble called “Bloody Sunday” became another symbol of the brutality of air combat.) Air combat escalated dramatically in World War II, culminating in hundreds of thousands of carpet bombings, firebombings, and more. and killed in bombings.
Today, Guernica is a sleepy and peaceful town. Franco’s death in 1975 marked Spain’s return to a constitutional monarchy and the restoration of significant political autonomy to the Basque people. Guernica City Hall flies both the Spanish and Basque flags, while most other buildings don’t care about the Spanish flag. A nearby gift shop sells Basque nationalist souvenirs — keychains with Basque crosses, refrigerator magnets with pastoral scenes — while Basque-language punk rock blasts from the speakers.
copy of Guernica Nestled near the sacred tree, the (now elected) leader of the Basque Country was once again sworn in, and visitors took photos next to the mural. What was once a massive disruption to cultural traditions has now become cultural traditions themselves.
