Gernika

Today we commemorate one more anniversary of the bombing of Gernika.

Don't allow the Basque spelling to confuse you, you may know this town by the name of Guernica.

And I'm sure that you are familiar with the famous painting by Pablo Picasso by the same name, "Guernica".

Maybe many times you wondered what all the nightmarish imagery in the painting represented, maybe someone told you it represented the bombing of a town during the Spanish Civil War.

The painting has become an icon of all what is wrong with war, the civilian casualties, the horrors unleashed on the innocent bystanders, the crazyness of a human killing another human over some little quarrel.

It is no wonder that not too long ago it was concealed behind a blue curtain while lies about some inexistent weapons of mass destruction were tossed around in order to convince the world of the necessity of yet one more war.

Ironic, because from all the missconceptions about the Basques, there is one that tells us that the people Guernica was the first civilian population to endure an airborne bombing.

For it was Winston Churchill who ordered the systematic murder of civilians in present day Iraq, using airplanes to reach remote areas.

Later the same tactic would be used against the rebellious Berbers in northern Sahara.

But since we are an Eurocentric society, we like to say that it happened first to the Basques, for they are after all, Europeans.

Or maybe it is that they were bombed by the biggest of all evils, Adolph Hitler.

Which in turn begs the question, if the Basques were targeted by Adolph Hitler, how come no one mentions them during each year's commemorative acts of the Holocaust?

The bombing of the Basque town of Gernika took place on a day like today in 1937.

It was not a military target for it was well beyond the front lines. But two individuals needed to placate their demons.

Franco was quite upset about the way the war was going, against all odds, the Basque army had been able to hold up on its defence of the newly created Basque Republic. Franco had the resources, the war machinery and troops from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. But somehow, the Basque gudaris that shouldn't have lasted days, managed to last weeks, and then months.

Hitler and Mussolini started to doubt the capability of Franco to win this war. They also started to question the reports given to them by Franco and the Pope that the Basques were all communists that were against the Church. Because day after day they witnessed the Basque devotion to the Catholic faith, and every so often a Basque priest would be captured while assisting the wounded gudaris, or sometimes even fighting side to side with them.

Hitler's advisors also were concerned with Franco's obsession on destroying the Basque industrial infrastructure. They could not understand why Franco was hell bent on conquering the region just to destroy its more valuable asset, its industry.

So Franco needed to break the Basque spirit, and he ordered the destruction of the very heart of the Basque nation, Gernika.

Hitler on the other hand needed to try this new strategy posed to him by his air warfare strategists. They needed to try out these new Junker bombers, they needed to try out their Stukas, heck, a prototype of the Messerschmitt was also waiting to be put to test.

And Hitler agreed, and the rest is history.

But they Basques did not give up just like that after the rape of Gernika, oh no, they continued to fight all the way to 1945.

Many gudaris and their families ended up in death camps in Germany and Poland. In Hegoalde, the Falangists abducted, murdered and tortured Basques that opposed the regime. The Guardia Civil torched the farms of Basque families that assisted Allied pilots, Jewish refugees and varied other peoples escaping the Nazis. In Iparralde the Gestapo rounded up as many Basques as they could to try to break down the organization known as La Ligne, an underground group that was the backbone of one of the escape routes out of occupied France.

This is why I agree when Suslush says that every Basque family should have a "Guernica" on the wall in their living rooms.

Today, my heart aches, for what happened that market day in Gernika, and for what its happening to humankind.

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