Pablo Picasso's Guernica
During
the afternoon and early evening of Monday, April 26th, 1937, the
German and Italian fascist air forces destroyed the Basque town of
Guernica . The war crime was ordered by the
Spanish nationalist military leadership and carried out by the Congor
Legion of the German luftwaffe and the Italian Aviazone Legionairre.
Designed to kill or main as many civilians as possible, Operation Rugen
was deliberately chosen for a Monday afternoon when the weekly town
market would be at its most crowded.
Spain at the time was embroiled in a convulsive civil war that had begun in July
1936 when the right-wing Nationalists led by General Francisco Franco
sought to overthrow Spain's democratically elected Popular Front Government It did not
take long before this bloody internal Spanish quarrel attracted the
participation of forces beyond its borders - creating a lineup of
opponents that foreshadowed the partnerships that would battle each
other in World War II. Fascist Germany and Italy supported Franco while
the Soviet Union backed the Republicans. Millions of people around the world felt passionately that rapidly
advancing fascism must be halted in Spain; and more than 35,000 heroic volunteers from dozens of other countries made
their way to Spain to fight and die under the Republican banner
including the Abraham Lincoln Brigade from the United States.
Guernica, in the Basque country
where revolutionary sentiment among workers was deep, was defenceless
from the bombers, which could fly as low as 600 feet.The raid’s purpose was to test a new bombing tactic to intimidate and
terrorize the resistance. For more than three hours, waves of explosive, fragmentary, and incendiary devices were
dumped in the town. In total, 31 tons of munitions were dropped between
4.30 in the afternoon and 7.30 in the evening. In the aftermath of the
raid, survivoHistory rs spoke of the air filled with the screams of those in
their death throes and the hundreds injured. Civilians fleeing the
carnage in the fields surrounding the town were strafed by fighter
planes. Human and animal body parts littered the market place and town
center, such , such horror.Guernica was effectively wiped of the
map. From a population of 5,000 some 1,700 residents were killed and a
further 800 injured. Three quarters of the buildings were raised to the
ground. Farms four miles away were flattened.
The destruction of Guernica was part of General Franco's wider, brutal
campaign against the existence of the Spanish Republic. This campaign
led not just to widespread destruction of property, but thousands of
civilian casualties too, as well as widespread displacement. Many sought
refuge abroad, as many as 3,800 Basque children were evacuated to
England and Wales for the duration of the war. The British Government at
the time callously refused to be responsible for the children, but
throughout the summer children were dispersed to camps throughout
Britain. Eight of these colonies were here in Wales. They were received
with a mixture of hostility and kindness, but they had all managed to
escape the grips of Franco's fascist Spain.
The significance of Guernica is that it was the first time that
civilians were deliberately targeted in an air attack; it was the first
time that a population centre was carpet bombed from the air; and it was
one of the first times that a population was used as a target from the
air by a foreign power to test the effectiveness of its aircraft and
the effectiveness of terror on the civilian population.Guernica
changed the mode of war. Before then, civilians in cities and towns away
from the front were by and large were relatively safe. In wars before then
air power was not capable of such bombing attacks. In World War I, by
and large, troops slugged it out in trenches on the front and there was
no air war.
News of the atrocity reached Paris several days later. Eyewitness reports filled local and international newspapers.
Picasso, sympathetic to the Republican cause, was horrified by the reports. Guernica is
his memorial to the massacre, and after hundreds of sketches, the
painting was done in less than a month before being delivered to the
Fair’s Spanish Pavilion, where it became the central attraction. Rather
than the typical celebration of technology people expected to see at a
world’s fair, in his mural, they saw a raw and
anguished anti-war statement, a haunting piece of work that
became a universal howl against the ravages of war. On a large
canvas he painted deformed
figures of women and children writhing in a burning city.A broken sword
in hand, a dismembered fighter lies with wide open eyes, an impassive
bull, a wounded dove and an agonising horse nearby. Picasso did
not agree with Franco´s regime and he was living in France for a long
period of time until his death in 1973 when he was 91 years old. One of
the most famous passages about his life is when he was interrogated by
the Gestapo while the Nazi occupation in Paris. When the officers saw
the Guernica they asked him “Did you paint that?” and he
replied “No, you did” Picasso's picture still resonates with tragedy,
capturing the full terror and horror of this terrible moment in history. It is still regarded as the 20thcentury’s most powerful
artistic indictment against war, and remains just as relevant to
civilians around the world who continue to be caught in today’s
conflagrations. The work’s emotional power comes from its immense size
of 349 cm times 776 cm (about 11ft tall and 25ft wide). It is a painting
challenges rather than accepts the notion of war as heroic.
.For many Basque people, the memory of the bombing and Picasso's visceral artistic response form part of their cultural identity. Franco, who ruled Spain as a fascist dictator for nearly forty years,
from 1936 until his death in 1975, claimed the attack on Guernica never
took place. They tried to blame the Basques, but the truth is Germany
deliberately bombed the town to destroy it and observe in a clinical way
the effects of such a devastating attack, practicing a new form of
warfare, where only civilians were the targets.In October 1937, a
Nationalist officer told' a Sunday Times correspondent: 'We bombed it, and bombed it, and bombed it and Beuno why
not.'
The Republican forces sent Guernica on a global tour to create
awareness of the war and raise funds for Spanish refugees. It travelled
the world for 19 years before it was loaned to The Museum of Modern Art
in New York for safekeeping. Picasso refused to allow it to return to
Spain until the country “enjoyed public liberties and democratic
institutions,” which did not occur until 1981 following Franco’s death.
Today it is on permanent display in the Reina Sofia, Spain’s national
museum of modern art in Madrid.
This atrocity horrified the world and helped shift public opinion
towards the Spanish Republican Cause, but shamefully the British
Government stuck steadfastardly to its non intervevention line. The
fascists hated liberalism and humanity, their ideology was one of evil
destruction, 'Long Live Death' they cried. Guernica represented their
creed, with one of the Fascist Generals declaring " Like a resolute
surgeon, free from false sentimentality, it will cut the diseased flesh
from the healthy body and fling it to the dogs. And since the healthy
flesh is the soil, the diseased flesh, the people who dwell on it,
fascism and the army will eradicate the people and restore the soil to
the sacred national realm... Every socialist, Republican, every one of
them, without exception, and needless to say, every Communist, will be
eradicated, without exception.' An ideology of unfettered hate, and
evil..... it's ideology still trying to tear the world apart, it's forces still seek to gather, fostering hatred and division.
After Guernica , George Steers eyewitness account in The Times described
what he saw as 'without mercy, with system', words that remain
tragically pertinent to the bloody legacy of carpet bombing in conflicts
ever since. Conflicts that continue across the world.... humanity still
descends into darkness.... the Rape of Nanking, the Second World War,
the Holocaust, Syria, Bahrain, Cheknya, Rwanda, the continuing
confontation between Israel and Palestine......
At the United Nations in 2016, French Ambassador Francois Delattre
compared the destruction in the Syrian city of Aleppo to
Guernica.“Aleppo is to Syria what Guernica was to the Spanish war, a
human tragedy, a black hole destroying all we believe in,” he said.
So we must remember Guernica , and its legacy, we must make sure the
fascists are stopped in their tracks, we must not let them pass.... we
must carry on singing no pasaron to
whatever disguise they dress themselves up in.It is important and timely to reflect on this tragic occasion .Guernica must be remembered , for our
time, and for future generations, a terrifying rendition of the
slaughter of innocents.
By April 1939, all of Spain was under fascist control and
Franco declared a victory .Solidifying his power with a brutal
dictatorship by oppressing and systematically killing any political
opposition.Over half a million people were killed in
the war, and in the next few years many tens of thousands more were
executed, not forgetting all those who died from
malnutrition, starvation, and war-engendered disease. General Franco's
military regime remained in power
until his death in 1975 depriving Spain of
freedom for several decades afterwards, the wound inflicted still
resonates.
Guernica - A.S Knowland
Irun- Badajoz - Malaga - and then Guernica
So that the swastika and the eagle
might spring from the blood-red soil,
bombs were sown into the earth at Guernica,
whose only harvest was a calculated slaughter.
Lest freedon should wave between the grasses
and the corn its proud emblem, or love
be allowed to tread its native fields,
Fascism was sent to destroy the innocent,
and, goose-stepping to the exaggerated waving
of the two-faced flag, to save Spain.
But though the soil be saturated with blood
as a very efficient fertiliser, the furrow
of the ghastly Fasces shall remain barren.
The planted swastika, the eagle grafted
on natural stock shall wither and remain sere;
for no uniformed force shall marshall the sap
thrilling to thrust buds into blossoms, or quicken
the dead ends of the blighted branches;
but the soil shall be set against an alien crop
and the seed be blasted in the planting.
But strength lies in the strength of the roots.
They shall not pass to ruin Spain!
Reprinted from
The Penguin Book of
Spanish Civil War Verse (1980)
So clearing written about the horror of fascism but then the military occupation of Palestine by Israel is described as a 'confrontation' between Israel and (what is left of) Palestine. The occupied and displaced people are not on an equivalence with Israel. They have no army, air force or navy but the desire for their inalienable rights.
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