Gernika: Violent Crackdown

The brutal crackdown that the Ertzaintza (Basque autonomic police force) carried out last Sunday night during the festivities in Gernika gave us the balance of four detainees -who were released from jail yesterday- and more than twenty injured. Several citizens defended themselves from the savagery of the police throwing bottles and setting up barricades, while many of those inside the festival's grounds harshly criticized the ertzainas' behavior and virulent actions.

The mayor of this Bizkaian town, José María Gorroño (EA), joined the criticism and considered that Sunday's crackdown was way out of proportion. This statement earned him a reprimand from the Interior Department that recriminated the mayor with a notice saying that all what the ertzainas did was to "enforce the law" and that with his statement the mayor "seemed to be placing the blame of the incidents on the Ertzaintza". According to the notice from the Interior Department the responsibility for the four detainees and the twenty injured was "from those who violate the Law, do not abide by the legal dispositions and carry out illegal acts".

If we're going to talk about responsibility, one of the basic principles of police actions is that they have to be proportional. Actions like threatening the elderly and children, break down parades, confiscate festivity floats and tear down banners do not seem to comply with this principle.

But that's what happens when an imposed government tries to suffocate every single aspect of social interaction which is exactly what the Spanish State is doing in the Basque Country.

Seventy years ago that very same town was the chosen target by the Spaniards to carry out one of the must infamous genocidal attacks against the Basques. The event is recorded in the collective memory of the international community as the epitome of all what can go wrong in a war. Unlike the Germans and the Italians, the Spaniard have never apologized to the Basque people for the destruction of the village and the death of over 1,600 defenseless civilians. Last Sunday was a reminder of the horror but thanks to the status enjoyed by Madrid due to the so called "war on terrorism" unleashed by George W. Bush and continued by Barack Obama the event has gone unnoticed by the international main stream media.

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Javier Aguirre's Basque Identity

Being a Mexican of Basque background is often misunderstood in Mexico, this is why we are glad to present this article about one of Mexico's must famous Basques, Javier Aguirre, the coach of the national soccer team published at Sign On San Diego:

Patriotic Aguirre leads with passion

El Tri coach follows no-nonsense path

Mark Zeigler

“Guernica” is the famous mural by Pablo Picasso depicting the 1937 bombing of the Basque village during the Spanish Civil War. It is painted in black, white and a dark blue.

Javier Aguirre looks at “Guernica,” at the haunting images of death and devastation, and sees another color.

Green.

Aguirre is Mexico's national soccer coach, the man charged with forging a route to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa at a time when a wide freeway has dwindled into a lonely dirt path leading into a dark, uncertain jungle. He is here not because it is necessarily a good career move, or because he thrives on the challenge of qualifying Mexico for the World Cup after a 1-3 start, or because of the six zeros on his paycheck, but because he has to.

“A commitment to my country, you know?” says Aguirre, 50, whose team plays Guatemala in a friendly today at 5 p.m. at Qualcomm Stadium. “I have to give something back to my people.”

Aguirre's nickname is “El Vasco.” The Basque. He wasn't born in the Basque region of northern Spain, but his parents were. His father fought in the Spanish Civil War at 17, was captured by Gen. Franco's nationalist army and later forced to fight for it in North Africa. His mother was from the village of Guernica.

She was there, standing in front of a church, when the planes from Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe began dropping the bombs. She was 7.

Someone grabbed her, rushed her into the church's bomb shelter.

That was 1937. Aguirre's father would get out of the army, meet Aguirre's mother, get married and look for a fresh start.

“Sometimes the worst part about the war is the post-war: no food, no job, (political) parties in jail, persecution,” says Aguirre, who speaks fluent English. “My parents decided to move to Mexico in 1950. My father changed his nationality from Spanish to Mexican.

“My parents spoke Basque at home, the food was Basque, but they knew that I was Mexican and I was born in Mexico. They told me the Mexican flag, the Mexican anthem, the Mexican language was the most important thing. My parents, they told me I have to love Mexico.”

In April, the bosses from Mexico's soccer federation called. They were desperate. The grand experiment of hiring a Swede, Sven-Goran Eriksson, had gone terribly wrong and El Tri found itself on the brink of not qualifying for a World Cup, on the brink of the unthinkable, the unfathomable.

Would he help?

Aguirre did this once before, swooping in during the rocky 2002 qualification and going 4-0-1 over the final five matches to secure a World Cup spot. He left to guide Osasuna, an unfancied club from the Basque city of Pamplona, to the UEFA Cup. From there he took Atletico Madrid, after a decade of embarrassing finishes, to the UEFA Champions League before a string of poor results led to his dismissal in February.

He was in demand. He could wait for another big club's job to open. He could stay in Spain, where his two sons attend college. He could let someone else step onto the bridge of El Tri-tanic.

And he couldn't.

A commitment to my country, you know?

There was the new life that Mexico gave to his parents, and the life it gave him. There also was 1981, when Aguirre was part of the national-team player pool that failed to qualify for the 1982 World Cup in Spain.

“I don't want to talk about it, but of course I know what would happen if we don't qualify for this World Cup,” he says. “I remember that feeling. It was a disaster, terrible. It was devastating, for the federation, for the people, for everyone.”

So he said yes.

San Diego is a city Aguirre knows well. He has owned a condominium in La Jolla Colony for the past decade, vacationing here with his family during the offseason, going to beach, attending Padres games.

But this trip is no vacation. “We are not here to relax,” he says.

Aguirre is known for crafting teams in his image, of a kid discovered by pro scouts relatively late in his career, of a player who relied on raw grit more than raw talent, of someone who never stops working. Superstars often don't flourish in his system, and he is not afraid to jettison them if they pout.

“He tries to make a good group,” goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa says.

Aguirre also talks of wanting “hungry players,” and one of his first acts as national coach was to eliminate their per diem on road trips. Not so they literally wouldn't eat, but to reinforce the notion that you play for pride on the national team and nothing else.

His roster for today's game, and for the CONCACAF Gold Cup that begins next week, has few of the veterans who play for some of the biggest clubs in Europe – much to the consternation of Mexico's predatory soccer media. In their place are youngsters with little international experience.

Or, in other words, the exact type of player Aguirre loves to coach. To mold. To motivate.

“The Mexican national team does not depend on anybody,” Aguirre says. “There are no starters. We are all Mexican. There are some people who may not agree with me. They may have favorite players. But that's the right I have been given, to choose who I want.”

He taps his coaching jersey. It's green.

“I need people who want to win, who are proud of this shirt,” he says, “proud to be on the national team, proud of the anthem, proud to be Mexican.”

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From Gernika to Farah

This article was published at Workers World:

Afghanistan & Guernica

THE FACTS: The U.S. Air Force bombed and strafed villages with heavy machine guns in the Farah province of Afghanistan on the evening and night of May 4. Col. Greg Julian, a spokesperson for the U.S. military in Kabul, admitted it.

The governor of the province, Rohul Amin, told the Afghan parliament that as many as 130 civilians had been killed, according to Mohammad Naim Farahi, a member of parliament. He reported that survivors buried 113 bodies, including many women and children. Later, more bodies were pulled from the rubble and some victims who had been taken to the hospital died.

“The governor said that the villagers have brought two tractor trailers full of pieces of human bodies to his office to prove the casualties that had occurred,” Farahi said. “Everyone at the governor’s office was crying, watching that shocking scene.”

Ghusuldin Agha, who lives in Granai village in the Bala Baluk district, said the bombing started at 5 p.m. and lasted until late into the night. “People were rushing to go to their relatives’ houses, where they believed they would be safe, but they were hit on the way.” Body parts were strewn over the ground.

Local farmer Muhammad Jan said: “Women and children had sought shelter in orchards and houses.” The bombardment completely destroyed houses and people “still remain under the rubble. Now I am working with other villagers trying to excavate the dead bodies.” According to a report on this atrocity in the May 6 New York Times, “Villagers, crazed with grief, were collecting mangled bodies in blankets and shawls and piling them on three tractors. People were still missing.”

Jessica Barry, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, reported the dead included a volunteer for the Afghan Red Crescent and 13 of his relatives.

THE LIE: “We have some other information that leads us to distinctly different conclusions about the cause of the civilian casualties,” said the senior U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David D. McKiernan, who was just fired by President Obama.

U.S. Defense Department officials who wouldn’t allow their names to be reported said investigators were looking into reports that the Afghan civilians were killed by grenades hurled by Taliban militants, and that the militants then drove the bodies around the village claiming the dead were victims of an American airstrike.

“We cannot confirm the report that the Taliban executed these people. ... We don’t know if it’s true, and we also don’t know how many civilians were killed as a result of this operation,” said Capt. John Kirby, spokesperson for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon.

THE BIG LIE: The town of Guernica, a historic symbol of the Basque nation, was attacked by Nazi German and fascist Italian bombers on April 26, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, killing up to 1,600 civilians. The German Nazis supported the Spanish fascists, led by Gen. Francisco Franco. World-famous artist Pablo Picasso depicted the massacre in his painting “Guernica,” which has kept the fascist atrocity in people’s memory.

Germany’s Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was well known for using the “Big Lie,” a brutal fascist repression of the truth. Franco, borrowing from this tactic, blamed the deaths in Guernica on Basque anti-fascists, and repressed the truth about German responsibility until his death in 1975.

Hitler and fascism arose in a time of capitalist crisis and decaying economic relations. Then and now the reality is a decaying capitalist system accompanied by burgeoning militarism. This time people are more interconnected worldwide and it’s difficult to cover up the monstrous crimes and the Pentagon’s big lies.

The problem is how to stop them. It can be done, and the struggle of the world’s people to overturn the U.S. military complex needs to be here in the belly of the beast.

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Articles copyright 1995-2009 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

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Guardian's Original Article About Gernika

The English newspaper The Guardian has published the original article regarding the bombing of Gernika:

Town of ten thousand in ruins

28 April 1937

Guernica, a town of some 10,000 inhabitants, was yesterday reduced to a mass of burning ruins by countless numbers of German "planes which kept up a continuous bombing for three and a half hours".

The full story of yesterday's massacre is not yet known, but what details there are are horrible enough. It is now disclosed that the rebel planes bombed and set fire to isolated farmhouses for a distance of five miles around Guernica. Even flocks of sheep were machine-gunned.

In Guernica itself it is not known how many hundreds of people have been killed; it may indeed never be known. The town is in ruins. The buildings left standing can be counted almost on the fingers of one hand. The convent of Santa Clara, which was being used as a hospital, was destroyed, with many of its inmates. Another small hospital, with 42 beds, was completely wiped out together with its 42 wounded occupants.

The raid occurred on market-day when the town was full of peasants who had come in to sell their produce. Many of the people who raced desperately for the open fields were systematically pursued and machine-gunned from the air by swooping fighters.

The survivors spent a night of horror sleeping where and if they could, awaiting with resignation their evacuation to-day. Since early this morning the roads leading to the rear have been thronged with long streams of peasants whose possessions are dumped on oxcarts. Today I visited what remains of the town. I was taken to the entrance of a street like a furnace which no one had been able to approach since the raid. I was shown a bomb shelter in which over fifty women and children were trapped and burned alive. Everywhere is a chaos of charred beams, twisted girders, broken masonry, and smouldering ashes, with forlorn groups of inhabitants wandering in search of missing relatives. I picked up one incendiary shell which failed to explode. It was made of aluminium, weighed nearly two pounds, and was liberally stamped with German eagles.

When I visited the town again this afternoon it was still burning. Most of the streets in the centre were impassable, so that it is still unknown how many victims there are. The bodies of the few dead yet recovered are horribly mutilated. Thousands of homeless people have been evacuated with efficiency by the Basque authorities and are now at Bilbao. Their arrival may increase the difficulties of food supply in this city.

A town of ten thousand inhabitants on market day with visitors from all the little towns in the area reduced to smoking rubble and today the Spaniards and even some members of the Basque government insist that only a few dozen were killed.

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Democracy Now! and the Gernika Bombing

This video from a show dedicated to Gernika's bombing was posted at the Democracy Now! webpage:

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On Anniversary of 1937 Guernica Bombing, Basque Community in Idaho Looks Back

Seventy-two years ago this Sunday, in the midst of the Spanish Civil War, on April 26th, 1937, the Basque town of Guernica was carpet bombed by Fascist Italian and Nazi German forces. Three-quarters of Guernica was destroyed, and as many as 1,600 civilians were killed. Boise, Idaho is home to one of the largest Basque populations in the United States. We speak with a survivor of the Guernica bombing and with the director Basque Museum and Cultural Center in Boise. [includes rush transcript]

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Franco's Incriminating Letters

When you read this article published at Times Online you have to keep in mind that Spain's government still subscribes to Franco's version of the genocidal attack on Gernika, that the real culprits were "the reds" and that there was no more than a dozen casualties.

Here you have it:

Revealed: Franco's desperate attempt to hide the truth about Guernica

Graham Keeley | Madrid

General Franco launched a propaganda campaign to try to counter a report by The Times that exposed the attack on Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, according to original documents.

George Steer, who was covering the war for the newspaper, revealed how the Nazi Luftwaffe Condor squadron reduced the Basque market town to rubble and unleashed a firestorm that killed 1,600 unarmed civilians.

Mr Steer’s report outraged the world and inspired Picasso’s masterpiece Guernica.

Thousands of original telegrams sent by General Franco to the Duke of Alba, the Nationalist Ambassador in London, are to go on show to the public at a new archive in Spain shortly.

They reveal the four-year campaign, waged by the man who was to rule Spain for 36 years, to counter damaging reports in the British Press and prevent their readers from supporting the Spanish Republican Government.

Three days after the devastating attack on Guernica, on April 26, 1937, Franco sent a telegram from his military headquarters in Burgos, northern Spain.

It read: “Escaping Basques recount frightening tragedies of a town like Guernica, burnt and destroyed intentionally by the Reds when our troops were only 15 kilometres away. Indignation great among Nationalist troops for slanderous Red manoeuvres, after destroying their best cities, try to lay blame Nationalist air force when this only pursues military objectives.”

But Mr Steer had already revealed the truth.

He was covering the Spanish Civil War from the Republican side and was one of the first journalists to reach Guernica, hours after the massacre. He waited before filing his report to find proof that the Nazis were responsible: three small bomb cases stamped with the German Imperial Eagle.

At this point, Nazi Germany had signed the Non-Intervention Pact and their troops were officially playing no role in the war.

Mr Steer’s report read: “Guernica was not a military objective... the object of the bombardment was seemingly the demoralisation of the civil population and the destruction of the cradle of the Basque race.”

The report appeared in The Times, was syndicated to The New York Times and went around the world.

When Picasso, who was in exile in Paris, read it, he was outraged and changed a canvas that he was preparing for an exhibition. The result was Guernica, a stark black-and-white canvas, that has come to symbolise the horror of war.

As Franco’s Nationalists faced international condemnation for the attack on defenceless civilians, which was to herald the era of total war, he sent another telegram to London.

Dated May 3, 1937, it criticised lack of coverage of the “murder of thousands of innocents in Madrid under the Presidency of the Red Government”. The telegram claimed that these “murders” were the “deliberate work of Red dinamiters [sic]”.

The efforts of Franco to counter bad publicity in the international Press extended from 1936 to 1940, even after he had crushed the Republican forces in 1939.

In thousands of telegrams, Franco’s propaganda machine sought to remind the world of the outrages it claims the Republican side committed.

They include the alleged murder of “17,000 priests”, the “theft of gold from the Bank of Spain” to Russia and the “barbarity” of the Republican militias.

In reality, though hundreds of priests were killed in the Civil War, the figure of “17,000” appears wildly exaggerated. The Republican Government did send the Soviet Union gold worth $500 million to pay for arms and support.

The documents were carefully preserved by the Duke of Alba and later stored in the Institute Cervantes in London.

Under an initiative to preserve documents relating to the Civil War and the dictatorship, they were transferred to the Historical Memory Documentation Centre in Salamanca in western Spain.

In 2006, Mr Steer was honoured with a street named after him and a bronze bust in Guernica after a 25-year campaign.

And then there is those within the international community that claim that Spain has never deployed an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Basque people. This article proves them wrong... again. No government can commit as many crimes as Madrid has against the Basques without the silent complicity of the international community. It is because of their own phobias against "the reds" that the Europeans agreed to allow Franco to remain in power and go on with his murderous reign of terror that lasts until today through his heir, Juan Carlos Borbon.

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Gernika's Lessons

Remember a few years back when George W. Bush, Tony Blair and José María Aznar were weaving their web of lies and deception in order to bully the international community into backing up their holly crusade in Irak?

There was a pivotal moment in which then Secretary of State Colin Powel was forced by Bush's hawks to lie before the UN Assembly, we can all remember how he moved around a small vial containing a white powder but few of us recall the blue drape behind him. That blue drape was put there to conceal Picasso's Guernica replica from the world's view for the painting was a stark reminded of what war really means.

Well, it did not matter, soon after Bush's USA went to war and now that very same replica will be touring Tony Blair's England, maybe because Aznar's Spain decided to abduct the original as an excuse for preventing the painting to be shown in Euskal Herria.

This note comes to us via The Independent:

Guernica in Britain: The art of war

No artwork left its mark on the 20th century as emphatically as Guernica. And Picasso's monumental painting remains as controversial as ever. As the UN's famous replica comes to Britain, Gijs van Hensbergen dissects its awe-inspiring power

Wednesday, 28 January 2009

On 3 November 1998, Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, stood up to address the International Council of New York's Museum of Modern Art (Moma): a world élite of tastemakers and guardians of culture. Referring to the Guernica tapestry, a copy of Picasso's original painting, that was hanging in the corridor outside the Security Council chamber room, Annan declared: "The world has changed a great deal since Picasso painted that first political masterpiece, but it has not necessarily grown easier. We are near the end of a tumultuous century that has witnessed both the best and worst of human endeavour. Peace spreads in one region as genocidal fury rages in another. Unprecedented wealth coexists with terrible deprivation, as a quarter of the world's people remain mired in poverty."

It was a grimly realistic analysis of how far the world had progressed since 1937, when Picasso reacted so powerfully to the catastrophe of the bombing of the Basques' spiritual capital, but also of how far we were from achieving that elusive goal of the UN mandate for enduring world peace. Annan's statement to Moma's International Council also recognised Guernica's unique position in the history of art, elevated as it had been to the status of moral exemplar; a universal icon, warning that unless we studied its lessons, history was doomed to repeat itself.

Just over four years later, in the last week of January 2003, in the wake of the twin towers tragedy, a blue shroud was thrown over the Picasso tapestry to hide it from public view.

Considering the central role Guernica had played in the UN's education programme, it was a strange and highly symbolic decision. According to Fred Eckhard, a UN spokesman who had been given the impossible task of playing down the significance of the action, it was merely that blue was a more appropriate colour as a backdrop for television cameras, in contrast to Picasso's visually confusing mixture of blacks and whites and greys. Other observers, however, were quick to draw their own conclusions. It wasn't colour or shape that was the problem; what the picture showed up was the embarrassing contradiction of presuming to take the moral high ground while simultaneously campaigning for war.

On 5 February, the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, shadowed by George Tenet, director of the CIA, had been scheduled to brief the United Nations Security Council in a last-ditch attempt to win UN approval for the war with Iraq that would start, according to military analysts, with a massive aerial bombardment of Baghdad that was to receive the chilling codename "Shock and Awe".

That same week, Hans Blix was expected to report back on either the discovery, or, as seemed more likely, the lack, of any concrete evidence proving that Saddam Hussein had been stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. On an almost daily basis, John Negroponte, US ambassador to the UN, had come out into the corridor to brief the world's press, while hovering in the background over his shoulder, the viewer could easily make out the mutilated bodies and screaming women of Picasso's painting. The presence of Picasso's Guernica was, it seemed, confusing the viewer. Painted as a passionate protest against senseless violence, it was once again succeeding only too well, illustrating perfectly the truism that we never seem to learn from our own mistakes.

Defiantly, in response to the cover-up of the painting, Laurie Brereton, a UN delegate representing Australia, pointed out: "Throughout the debate on Iraq, there has been a remarkable degree of obfuscation, evasion and denial, and never more so than when it comes to the grim realities of military action. We may well live in the age of the so-called 'smart bomb', but the horror on the ground will be just the same as that visited upon the villagers of Gernika [the Basque spelling of the town]... And it won't be possible to pull a curtain over that."

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It was obvious that from the day of its creation, Guernica has never lost its power to shock. Even when reproduced, in tapestry, or in poster form, it still continues to mirror the horror of war and throw a harsh spotlight on our propensity for cruelty. Subtly, over the years, Guernica has reinvented itself and changed from being a painting born out of war to one that speaks of reconciliation and the hope for an enduring world peace.

In 1937, on Monday 26 April, as Franco's Nationalist forces pushed north to cut off Bilbao and take control of the Basque Country, the decision was taken to crush resistance with an overwhelming show of force. At 4pm, and for the next three hours, 60 Italian and German planes rained incendiary bombs down on Gernika, reducing it to a burning wreck. Nothing like this had been seen in Europe before. And no single act was so prescient of what the world would soon come to understand as the appalling reality of total war, where innocent people are bombed indiscriminately, or strafed by machine-gun fire as they escape from the carnage in towns up into the hills. The newspapers reported graphically on the tragedy, and the shockwaves circled the globe.

In Paris, on 1 May, Pablo Picasso, who was by then the world's most famous living artist, started to give concrete form to his powerful sense of revulsion, jotting down at lightning speed some initial ideas. Over the next fortnight, preparatory sketches, drawings, and paintings poured out with a feverish passion.

By late June 1937, Picasso was ready to put the finishing touches to a painting that had been executed on such a scale that he had been forced to jam it in at an angle in his enormous studio on rue des Grands Augustins. The canvas, which had acquired the title Guernica, was covered with what at first sight seems a chaotic jumble of animals and contorted human bodies drawn out in an austere palette of blacks, whites and scumbled greys.

Photographs taken by Picasso's new lover, Dora Maar, show the artist reaching forward from the top rung of a stepladder, stretching out to make a quick addition at the top of the canvas. Sweating, almost manically absorbed, Picasso paces up and down the painting's length, feeling and reading its almost palpable presence and testing out, again and again, the suffocating pressure of its interior space. Torn paper was pasted on to the canvas to try out possible changes and then quickly removed. Ideas and doodles were torn out of the ether, built up and overlayered, one on top of the other, as they were drawn into the painting's creative vortex and hammered into shape. Desperately short of time, Picasso had covered the almost 30 square metres of canvas in little less than six weeks. By any standards, it was an extraordinary achievement.

Out of the chaos, Picasso had managed to give shape to an arresting and profoundly disturbing image. There was nothing that specifically alluded to Gernika, or the terror that rained down from the skies. Instead, Picasso had resorted to employing images whose simplicity and meaning could travel across every cultural divide. At the base of the painting, decapitated, splintered and crushed, lies the corpse of a dead warrior, strangely reminiscent of a classical bust. Above him the weight of a horse, contorted with pain and clearly in its death throes, threatens to collapse to the ground.

On the right of the picture, three women in various states of distress look in upon the scene. In the background, barely discernible at first, a cockerel is crowing up at the skies from the top of a table. Most poignant of all, at the extreme left edge, the picture is anchored and framed by the tragic image of a mother with the limp body of her dead child held in her arms, who in turn is overshadowed by an impassive bull. Only the ghost of a wind blows across the canvas to lift the beast's tail.

At first sight, there seems to be no clear relationship between cause and effect. There is no easy way in to read the story or discover exactly at what point we have joined the narrative. But among the shattered walls, blind doorways and roofs, we come to a growing realisation that something terrible has happened here.

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When first shown at the Paris Exposition in 1937, the painting's reception was strangely muted. In fact, considering the coolness with which it was initially received, particularly by the official Basque delegation, it would have been reasonable to assume that Guernica might end up rolled and stored in the back of Picasso's Paris studio, like Les Demoiselles d'Avignon; left to collect dust and haunt those who had seen it with ever fainter echoes of a drama that had long since played itself out. Awkward and difficult to transport, this was perhaps the most likely outcome. After all, in the remaining Republican strongholds of Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia, the most obvious venues for showing the work, it would have served only to demoralise the militiamen who were witnessing daily what was painted out so graphically across Picasso's large backdrop.

During the Second World War, however, and particularly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Guernica's imagery became more recognisable, indeed painfully familiar. City after city in Europe was bombed. Finally the catastrophic lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the stark realisation that the world would never be the same again. With no hint of irony, the President of the United States, Harry S Truman, announced sombrely: "I fear that machines are ahead of morals by some centuries, and when morals catch up, there'll be no need for any of it.' Guernica had been horribly prescient. What it depicts is modern mass slaughter only faintly disguised behind the ancient rituals of death. Every community in the world that has suffered an appalling atrocity has become synonymous with Guernica the painting and Gernika the town, the brutalised spiritual heartland of the beleaguered Basques.

As the prolonged sound of air-raid sirens boom out across a threatened city somewhere far away, each new conflict, each new bombing, each act of total devastation, begs the question: shall this be the Gernika of our age? Warsaw, Coventry, Dresden, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Stalingrad, Hiroshima, Stalin's Gulag Archipelago, Pol Pot's Cambodia and, closer to us today, Rwanda, southern Sudan and Srebrenica. Iraqi Kurdistan has its Halabja. Recently, during the Balkan crisis in Kosovo, Serbs attempted to liquidate the Kosova Liberation Army. Each and every example has been cited as the Gernika of its day.

On 23 September 1998 in Washington, DC, Senator John McCain took to the Senate floor, declaring: "We have not lacked for rhetoric, but we have proven woefully inadequate at backing up our words with resolute action... Mr President, prominently displayed in the United Nations building in New York is Picasso's famous and haunting Guernica. That painting symbolised for the artist the carnage, the human suffering on an enormous scale, that resulted from the Spanish Civil War as a prelude to the Second World War. Perhaps it is too abstract for those countries in the United Nations that oppose the use of force to stop the atrocities that have come to symbolise the former Yugoslavia, or that believe the war in Kosovo is the internal business of Serbia."

Just as Anne Frank's story has become symbolic of all the Jewish children lost in the extermination camps, and Auschwitz shorthand for the apocalyptic horror of the Holocaust, Guernica has become synonymous with indiscriminate slaughter in whatever corner of the world such tragedy takes place.

On any given day, somewhere in the world, in parliaments, council chambers and in open debate, Guernica is cited to add a sense of moral suasion and urgency to the argument. Picasso's Guernica is the image that draws our constant attention to the proximity of catastrophe. Reproduced by the million, copied by other artists, reinterpreted by even more, Guernica remains, nonetheless, inviolate and unspoilt.

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The extraordinary thing about Guernica is that it refuses to yield and drown under the weight of its own ubiquity. It is still an image that can awaken the nightmares of our historical past while painting a terrifying scenario of what has yet to come. Despite the marketing and the myriad psychological, sociological, historical and art-historical interpretations – enough to fill a library – it can still be guaranteed to stun the viewer into silence as he witnesses it afresh. Guernica has, and this is even more unusual, the capacity to speak intimately to the individual while also remaining a universal symbol that is understood by all.

From Paris in 1937 to the United Nations today, much of the painting's meaning has lain beyond Picasso's reach and control. Guernica has its own life, forging a relationship with its audience that has often been entirely separate from the life of the genius who brought it into our world. Over the years, that audience and historical circumstances have continued to change. And Guernica, as is inevitable, has become stylistically dated.

But while the fabric of the painting has become increasingly fragile, as a work of art it has nevertheless been ageing well. It has never lost its relevance, nor its magnetic, almost haunting appeal. From its first showing in Paris to its arrival in Spain 44 years later, it has witnessed and helped to define a century. That its lessons have still not been heeded or learnt makes it as relevant and iconic today as it ever was. Guernica, for better or for worse, more than any other image in history has helped to shape the way that we see.

Extracted from 'Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon', by Gijs van Hensbergen, published by Bloomsbury (£10.99). To order a copy for the special price of £9.89, plus free post & packing, call Independent Books Direct on 0870 079 8897. The Guernica Tapestry will be on display at the Whitechapel Gallery, London E1, from 5 April 2009 to 18 April 2010 (www.whitechapel.org )

'While I work, I leave my body outside the door'

For art historians keen to search out Guernica's ancestors in art, the painting has proved a minefield. Picasso had often stressed the need for the modern artist to be a visual kleptomaniac, and with Guernica he didn't disappoint.

He had raided the store cupboard of art history and drawn from myriad sources: from Roman funerary sculpture to David's Oath of the Horatii; from the 10th-century St Sever Apocalypse in the Beatus de Liébana codex, to Catalan primitive art; from the classical Winged Victory of Samothrace to Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty; from Grunewald's Isenheim Altarpiece to Delacroix's Massacre at Chios; from Gericault's Raft of the Medusa to Rubens's Horror of War in Florence's Pitti Palace; from Guido Reni to Poussin; from Pierre Paul Prud'hon to press photographs in L'Humanité and Ce Soir; from Rogier van der Weyden's Descent from the Cross to Goya's Third of May and his horrific Desastres prints. One recent theory suggests inspiration also came from an anonymous Catalan fresco, The Triumph of Death, in Palermo's Palazzo Abatellis.

All these were absorbed, metamorphosed and transformed. Picasso also used his own earlier motifs; in Guernica we find passages from Songe et Mensonge and Minotauromachy, of course, but the Crucifixion, Three Dancers, Vollard Suite, early bullfight juvenilia and hundreds of other echoes, faintly remembered gestures, similar compositions and the employment of his habitual techniques are there too.

It mattered little that Picasso sourced so readily from elsewhere; what mattered was his capacity to come up with something shocking and new. He had performed a kind of visual alchemy in which the immediate power of the propaganda poster sits side by side with something as ancient and atavistic as the Altamira bull. On 12 July 1937, the Paris Exposition's Spanish Pavilion opened and the public could study Guernica and decide for themselves.

Few artists in history, excepting Goya, whose Second and Third of May were produced in just two months, have been capable of imagining and bringing to resolution such a complex and ultimately convincing work in such a short time. Physically, as well as intellectually, it was a remarkable feat.

Françoise Gilot, continually surprised by Picasso's extraordinary stamina, wondered at the physical cost of such an obsessive drive. "I asked him if it didn't tire him to stand so long in one spot. He shook his head. 'No,' he said. 'That's why painters live so long. While I work I leave my body outside the door, the way Muslims take off their shoes before entering the mosque.'" GvH

The Spanish Civil War: 1936 to 1939

Fighting broke out after a group of Spanish army generals, Franco among them, rebelled against the government of the Second Spanish Republic, which came to power in 1931 following the abdication of King Alfonso XII.

The conflict attracted worldwide attention as a struggle between left and right, with the elected Republicanos, or Popular Front, backed by the Communist Soviet Union, and Franco's Falangistas supported by Fascist Germany and Italy.

The military coup began in mid-July 1936. In early November, the Republican government fled Madrid for Valencia. Germany and Italy recognised the new regime and sent support before the year was out.

In addition to the civilian casualties of the horrific bombing raids that inspired 'Guernica', historians estimate that up to 50,000 people were executed on both sides, including the poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca.

The Falangistas won the war in 1939, and Franco began his bloody 36-year rule. Over the next 12 years, his supporters murdered at least 100,000 Spanish citizens. Republicans were subjected to constant persecution.

Although photographers and reporters had covered earlier wars, the Spanish Civil War attracted an unprecedented level of foreign attention because of developments in media and communications. Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn and George Orwell famously wrote dispatches from Madrid and a variety of front lines, illustrating the human cost of war.

The photographer Robert Capa covered the war with his partner, Gerda Taro. His 'Falling Soldier' picture, alongside 'Guernica', is the most memorable representation of the war. Purported to depict the moment a Republican soldier took a fatal bullet, 'Falling Soldier' is held up as an example of how propagandistic photography can shape the image of a war internationally. Capa went on to found the Magnum photographic agency. He was killed by a landmine while covering the war in Indochina in 1954. Sophie Morris

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Dave Boling

I've posted a couple of articles regarding Dave Boling's book "Guernica", well, this is a chance to learn about the author of the book thanks to an article published by Seattle Pi:

'Guernica' puts sports columnist Dave Boling in the international spotlight

Last updated October 20, 2008 8:53 p.m. PT

By JOHN MARSHALL
P-I BOOK CRITIC

Forget the quiet writer's garret. Dave Boling's powerful debut novel was written in hotel rooms, on airplanes and in crowded concourse waiting areas, often when its author was covering sports events.

"I think I wrote half the novel at Gate C21 during layovers at O'Hare Airport in Chicago," Boling said.

The novel's unlikely gestation is hardly the only thing that distinguishes it.

The usual debut novel has the author's personal experience thinly disguised through altered dates, places and names. Boling's debut could have reflected his dozen years as a sports columnist at Tacoma's News-Tribune, or playing center on the University of Louisville football team.

His goal was grander. He focused on an infamous event in 20th-century history -- the bombing of a Basque village during the Spanish Civil War, a slaughter of civilians remembered mainly for inspiring one of Pablo Picasso's most celebrated paintings.

Boling's "Guernica" (Bloomsbury, 361 pages, $26) is an engrossing, dramatic family saga filled with engaging characters and resonant details of rural Spanish life. The fierce pride and independence of the Basque people is captured in its pages, as are their cultural traditions.

To the author's amazement, "Guernica" is on its way to becoming an international sensation. Already a best-seller in Spain, where Boling did a recent book tour, the book is being published in 11 countries, with a British edition coming in February.

Boling's visibility as a novelist in the U.S. is sure to get a boost in November when "Guernica" becomes one of 12 titles in the "Discover Great New Writers" program at every Barnes & Noble store across the country.

Boling's advance is reported to be in the "high six figures," but don't expect the down-to-earth debut novelist from Federal Way to leave newspaper work soon.

"I wouldn't say I could leave my day job -- with agents and taxes, I may only see dimes on (advance) dollars," he related. "I want to keep writing fiction and sports. This is the new challenge for me, and I like it."

Several factors persuaded Boling to consider writing a novel back in 2005. The newspaper business was starting to founder and he worried he "needed to start hedging my bets."

After all, Boling went into journalism on a whim when he was an unemployed logger in Idaho. The newspaper in Coeur d'Alene was advertising for a sportswriter.

"I'll bet I could do that," he thought.

He talked his way into the job, in part because he could be a real asset in the paper's upcoming touch football game against the local police.

Boling's venture into fiction was inspired by two writers from the Spokesman-Review in Spokane who made the transition to novels: Jess Walter of Spokane, whose "The Zero" was a finalist for the National Book Award, and Jim Lynch of Olympia, whose "The Highest Tide" earned many raves.

Boling knew what story his novel would tell. He had met a woman of Basque descent at the University of Idaho and they soon married. Their decades together with two children provided an immersion in Basque culture and history, including the 1937 bombing of Guernica.

It had been on Boling's mind ever since 9/11. Guernica had been one of the most prominent examples of the slaughter of innocent civilians in the 20th century, yet Boling saw no mention of this parallel in the coverage of the 2001 attack. He hoped a novel could bring renewed attention to Guernica.

Boling also had definite ideas about the characters he wanted: "We seem to be getting too far away from characters like Atticus Finch in 'To Kill A Mockingbird,' characters of high ideals and morals," he said. "I wanted to create characters I could look up to."

Once Boling started to write, he found that the characters fueled the novel's progress. He had no real plot outline. He built toward the daylong attack by German air force planes, which dropped 100,000 pounds of bombs on Guernica (just 15 pages in the novel), then included some years of its aftermath. Historical research provided crucial details, as did family experiences and past trips to Spain.

Finding the time

Carving out time to write, the bane of many writers, was never a problem for Boling. Road trips covering Seattle sports teams provided ample opportunities. When other sportswriters got together for a post-game libation, Boling returned to his room to write. He found he could work on the novel anywhere.

"Sportswriters operate under extreme conditions, with bands playing and Laker Girls dancing," he explained. "You have no choice but to focus on your computer and make your story happen as best you can. You develop a capacity to focus and I transferred that to fiction writing."

"When I got on a plane, I would get my laptop out and start to work. I would immediately get so involved in the novel's story that I could literally hear the people talking and I could smell their food and visualize the hills where they lived. It was almost like self-hypnosis. The next thing I knew, there'd be an anouncement to 'return seatbacks to the upright position.' "

Boling lived up to his reputation as a prodigious, fast writer, producing a manuscript of 600 pages in 18 months while also writing three or four sports columns every week.

Among the first to read the novel were Walter and Lynch, who offered advice on technical matters such as voice and scene. Both were much impressed.

Lynch recalled, "What surprised me was that Dave had not gone through the usual training wheels of becoming a fiction writer -- short stories and learning the craft and then getting 70 pages into a novel and losing faith. Dave had such great passion for the story he wanted to tell. He is fearless by nature."

Lynch recommended that Boling send the manuscript to his New York literary agent, Kimberly Witherspoon of InkWell Management. She immediately sensed it was "an extraordinary book" with commercial potential, both in America and abroad, but she had to deliver depressing news to the author: The manuscript was way too long.

Boling remembers what happened next: "Kim said she wanted to market 'Guernica' at the Frankfurt International Book Fair but that was only a few days away. Here's where my sportswriter training came in. I cut 180 pages of the manuscript over that weekend and covered a football game, too. Out went entire characters, history and culture and politics; I kept it close to the story of one family -- this is a story of relationships, a family love story; the history is secondary."

Witherspoon's mission to Frankfurt met with instant success. First to purchase Boling's novel was prestigious Picador in Great Britain. Editor Charlotte Greig only needed to read 50 pages to know she wanted to publish Boling's book. She then called her publisher in Frankfurt, urging him to make an offer.

"I haven't read a word of it," he said.

Greig replied, "Trust me on this: It is exceptional!"

In a little over a month, Boling went from undiscovered writer with a manuscript to a writer with a book bought by presses around the globe. Boling did not know then that this is warp speed in a business that often advances glacially.

Truly a dream

Boling's new life as a hardback writer has unfolded in what he calls "pinch-me moments."

His Spanish book tour had many. Boling went with trepidation, expecting skepticism for a novel by a U.S. sportswriter about the bombing of Guernica.

Several Spaniards told him, "We were ready to tear this book apart, but it rang true." That was a huge relief for Boling, who had had the book checked for accuracy by Spanish and Basque experts in the States.

Another memorable moment came on the day of publication. He was at a local Barnes & Noble when a woman approached. He recommended the book to her, which prompted her to ask, "Did you read it?"

"No, I wrote it."

She agreed to buy a copy, but added: "I want something profound inscribed. Write what you learned from this experience."

Boling was stumped. Then he thought: "Supposedly, you just can't do this -- start writing fiction at age 53 and have a novel that sells like this. I worked my ass off, had a lot of luck and help from people but it did happen."

So Boling wrote in her book: "Nothing is impossible."

But the most powerful moments came at two book readings. In Boise, he read with his son, Jake, from the University of Idaho, in the crowd. In Spain, he did a reading attended by his daughter, Laurel, who is teaching English in Madrid.

"I looked up from my reading and made eye contact with my kids," Boling recalls, "and there was this instant connection, a warm, comforting feeling.

"It was like when my kids were in bed and I was reading them a nighttime story. I could sense that both of them were proud of me -- and if you can make your kids proud of you, there is no greater reward. All of the money, all the reviews, all the attention are secondary to that."

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Basque-phobe of the Week : Hans-Gert Pöttering

Well, just a few days ago a pro-torture Canadian judge earned the title of Basquephobe of the week, now we have a German showing his bias against the Basque people.

This note appeared today at EU Business:

European parliament head sees no need for Basque referendum

03 October 2008, 23:02 CET

(MADRID) - European Parliament President Hans-Gert Pottering said on Friday he saw no need for Spain's Basque region to hold a referendum on self-determination, a move desired by nationalists there.

"I don't see the need for a referendum in the Basque Country," he said in response to an AFP question at a conference in Madrid.

"Today in the EU we have a system where all people can live their identity. People of the Basque Country can live in Spain. I see no reason for a region to split away from the Spanish state," he added.

Last month Spain's Constitutional Court ruled that a plan by authorities in the Basque region to hold a referendum on self-determination was illegal on the grounds that only the central government could call such a vote.

The ruling was a defeat for the Basque region's nationalist president, Juan Jose Ibarretxe, who was the driving force behind the non-binding vote he had scheduled for October 25.

Ibarretxe has said he will appeal against the Spanish court's decision to the European Court of Human Rights.

The wealthy northeastern Basque Country, which has its own distinct language and culture, already enjoys a high level of self-government and polls show the majority of Basques do not want to secede outright from Spain.

The armed Basque separatist group ETA, which has killed over 820 people in its 40-year campaign of bombings and shootings for an independent Basque homeland, has long defended the Basque people's right to self-determination.

According to information easily available on the internet Pöttering is a German conservative politician who just won European Excellence Award 2008 of the Autonomous Community of Madrid ('Premio a la Excelencia Europea 2008'). Was that a bribe to get him to speak against the Basque political rights? What's next, is he sending the Lüftwaffe to bomb Durango and Gernika?

I am going to answer Herr Pöttering why there is a need for a real referendum regarding the right of the Basque people to its self-determination, and I am saying a real one because the one championed by Ibarretxe is not even a true referendum on self-determination.

The reason is there is such a thing as a United Nation's Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which reads in its first article:

Article 1

1. All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

2. All peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources without prejudice to any obligations arising out of international economic co-operation, based upon the principle of mutual benefit, and international law. In no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence.

3. The States Parties to the present Covenant, including those having responsibility for the administration of Non-Self-Governing and Trust Territories, shall promote the realization of the right of self-determination, and shall respect that right, in conformity with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations.

Spain signed that Covenant just like France did, oh, and Germany. By the way, Germany also recognized the right of Kosovo to "split from the" Serbian state, and since there is Albanians living their identity in Europe in a country called Albania then there was no good reason for the Albanians in Kosovo to secede, all they needed to do was to move back to Albania following Pöttering's logic.

To the coward who wrote the article I say, the Basque Country is today a continental colony to two colonialist powers, France and Spain. As if that was not enough, they Basques live in three different political entities, two of which are located south of the Pyrenees (Navarre and the Basque Autonomous Community) and one north of the Pyrenees, grouped with Pau in something called the Pyrinees Atlantiques. That is why despite living in a wealthy region that enjoys "a high level of self-government" the Basques still long for self determination, so they can leave together, with no borders dividing them and preventing them from strenghtening their culture.

And what about those polls that say that Basques do not want independence from France and Spain, wouldn't an actual referendum sponsored by the UN and/or the EU would put that discussion to rest? Why then the opposition to a referendum?

One last thing, thanks to the right of self-determination Germany is an unified country today, how strange it results that a German refuses the same right to the Basques, who live in two different states due to the current political situation. To want for some what you deny to others is called discrimination, and I still remember a certain Austrian-Catholic politician who unified all German peoples and who discriminated against the Jewish and the Roma communities.

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"Guernica" : A Novel

The bombing of Gernika by the German Luftwaffe supporting the military revolt led by Francisco Franco continues to inspire artists around the world.

On this article published by The Oregonian you will learn about a novel written by Dave Boling that revolves around a Basque family from Gernika.

Here you have it:

'Guernica' novel traces Spanish Civil War through Basque family saga

Dave Boling brings his reporter's eye to a compelling exploration of a tragedy as experienced by one family

Sunday, September 07, 2008
MATT LOVE
Special to The Oregonian

On April 26, 1937, the German Luftwaffe bombed Guernica, the cultural center of the Basque people located in north-central Spain near the Bay of Biscay.

The raid, which served no strategic purpose, destroyed most of the city, left hundreds dead and wounded, and represented the zenith of barbarity in the Spanish Civil War, eventually won by the fascists.

Not long after the bombing, Pablo Picasso immortalized the calamity in a monumental painting, and that's all many of us really know of Guernica -- carnage and the huge canvas.

But who were the Basques killed or dispossessed in the raid? What were their traditions and stories? What was Guernica before its destruction?

In his debut novel, "Guernica," Dave Boling, a columnist for the Tacoma News-Tribune, explores these questions with a reporter's eye and a novelist's heart and imagination. The result is a wonderful and thought-provoking mini-epic packed full of fascinating, little-known European history, rich characters and empathy for the civilians who paid the awful price when a savage civil war visited them.

In "Guernica," Boling unfolds the Basque saga of the Ansotegui family from 1893 to 1940 in restrained yet evocative prose. Justo is the oldest of three brothers and assumes control of the family farm at age 15 after his mother dies and his father drifts away, insane with grief.

In the years before the plague of fascism spreads across Europe, Justo takes a wife, Mariangeles, and they have a beautiful daughter, Miren. Miren grows up, becomes a renowned dancer, and marries Miguel, an accomplished woodworker. Together, they all become one of the most beloved and respected families in Guernica. Boling, who married into a Basque family, deftly reveals the unique and colorful cultural traditions that defined the Basque people from that era.

Then comes worldwide depression, Francisco Franco, the civil war, the raid, and its devastating effect upon the Ansotegui family and the Basque people. By far the novel's best section is a tense 30-page depiction of the bombing, which many military historians consider the first instance of directly targeting a civilian population in an urban area. It would set the stage for World War II and much, much worse to come.

After the fires are extinguished and the bodies buried, what's left of the Ansotegui family must regroup and reclaim some semblance of a life amid war. Some choose to fight the fascists while others merely try not to starve.

If any criticism could be leveled against "Guernica," it's that a reader has no idea who the Spaniards are -- fascist or otherwise. With the exception of Picasso, a minor character who wasn't even living in Spain during the civil war, they are absent from the novel except for a few stock soldier/villains.

Despite this puzzling absence, Boling has written a fine first novel about one of the most mysterious and exotic peoples of Europe -- the Basques. They still inhabit the north-central part of Spain and make headlines in their (sometimes violent) attempts to gain independence. Their determination lives on, even after Guernica.

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Open Circle Dances

This article comes to us via EITb:

Basque dances

Open circle dances in one or two rows

08/25/2008

The most popular of the dances is the Aurresku, which means “first hand” in Basque, and is the name given to the first dancer in the Rope Dance and is in charge of leading the dance

Open circle dances, the most common kind of dances in the Basque Country, have a number of variations: Aurresku, Gizon dantza (Men’s Dance) or Soka Dantza (Rope Dance).

The most popular of the three is however the Aurresku, which means “first hand” in Basque, and is the name given to the first dancer in the Rope Dance, who is the most agile of the group and is in charge of leading the dance. This ancient and simple structure is repeated in virtually all of our local fiestas.

Still widely performed in Gipuzkoa are a variety of Gizon Dantzas, one of which is performed in San Sebastian’s Plaza de la Constitución on the eve of St. John’s Day. Others are those of Legazpi (May 3), Oñate (Corpus Christi), Abaltzisketa (evening of June 23), Tolosa (St. John’s Day), Zumarraga (July 2) and Aretxabaleta.

In Ordizia, on July 26, St. Ann’s Day, we can see a version of the Aurresku known as “Santaneros” which is performed by the couples who have married during the year.

Dances of this kind are still to be found in the Bizkaian towns of Abadiño (May 15), Berriz (June 29 and July 2), Forua (July 31, St. Ignatius), Garai (July 25, 26 and 31), Gernika-Lumo (Carnival Sunday), Iurreta (Sept. 29 and the following Sunday), Mañaria (Aug. 15), Markina-Xemein (Aug.29 and 30) and Elorrio (first Sunday in October). A number of versions are danced by women, as is the case of Lekeitio and Garai, performed on June 29 and July 26 respectively.

Variations likewise exist in Alava, such as the St. Isidore Dance (14 May) in Salinas de Añana and the popular Txulalai or Marmarisola danced on February 2 and 3 in Páganos, a neighbourhood of Laguardia. The Soka Dantza is also performed in Maeztu (June 17), and in Vitoria-Gasteiz (Aug. 5), at the “Virgen Blanca” fiestas.

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Art Inspired by Gernika

This note talks about art inspired by one of the many crimes committed by Spain against the Basque people, it comes to us via the Knaresborough Post:

The words behind Picasso's painting

Published Date: 22 August 2008
By Staff Copy

Picasso's Guernica: An Adventure in Poetry and Prose
Henshaw’s Taste Gallery

THE story of Guernica, Picasso’s anti-war masterpiece, was told by Ian Gray in a presentation, which interwove poetry, prose and pictures and dealt with the wider story, events and personalities surrounding the painting.

The atrocity which inspired Picasso was the bombing of Guernica, a small town in the Basque country in April 1937, by aeroplanes from the Italian Air Force and the German Condor Legion, killing around 1,600 people and injuring 900.

The report on the bombing by The Times journalist, George Steer shocked the world and horrified Picasso, who set about making sketches for Guernica.

Picasso had been asked to submit a painting for the Spanish Republican Pavilion at the World’s Fair in July 1937, and within a few weeks had finished the awe-inspiring, 27”x 11.5” painting. Possibly as a reaction to horrific black and white photographs and newsprint, the painting is black, white and grey.

Gray’s poetry and prose linked all elements of the painting’s history up to the present. He examined the symbolism of the images, the importance of the press reports, the painting of the picture and its impact.

The painting is still controversial in the 21st century. In 2003 a tapestry of Guernica had been covered over before a photographic session at the United Nations, when Colin Powell, then US Secretary of State, was presenting the American case for war against Iraq.

A few weeks later Iraq was invaded. This inspired a moving poem ending: “A man came to seduce the world and would not take “no” for an answer.”

It was a thought-provoking and informative evening and served to underline that unfortunately in the theatre of war and the bombing of civilians little has changed.

Sheila Loffill

The thing is, while Germany apologized for their part in the genocidal attack, the Spanish government is proud of what took place that day.

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The 2008 Billabong Pro in Mundaka

This article comes to us via Global Surf News:

The Billabong Pro returns to mythic barrels of Mundaka

Billabong Pro Mundaka

ASP World Tour event #9
Mundaka, Basque Country
29 September - 12 October 2008

The Billabong Pro returns to Europe’s mythical Mundaka rivermouth

Surfersvillage Global Surf News, 12 August, 2008 : - - - Mundaka has become a reference in worldwide surfing for its mythical rivermouth left-hander located at the opening of the river of Gernika and the North Atlantic Ocean. Since the inaugural event in 1999, surfing legends from all over the world have come over to surf this mythical wave, renowned for its long and hollow waves.

However, the wave of Mundaka is also known for its fickle conditions. This was made evident with the absence of a workable sandbar, reason for the cancellation of the event in 2005. According to the latest studies and the comments of the surfing locals, the barrels of Mundaka are in perfect condition.

This year, Billabong will set up an alternate site on the beach of Sopelana, a place that offers fantastic waves. The site is only a few car-minutes away from the center of Bilbao. The decision to surf either at Mundaka or Sopelana will be taken on a daily basis by the contest director, after assessing the conditions in both sites with the surfers and the ASP officials.

The Billabong Pro Mundaka plays a crucial part in deciding world champions. Being the third last event on the 11 stop tour intense competition ensues as tour leaders jostle for rating points leading into the final two events of the year in Brazil and Hawaii.

Bobby Martinez (USA) will be back to try to make it 3 wins in a row at Mundaka along with prestigious names such as Joel Parkinson (Australia), Taj Burrow (Australia), 07 World Champ Mick Fanning (Australia) and current tour leader Kelly Slater (USA).

Alongside the 45 world´s best surfers, three “Wild Card” surfers have also been invited to compete in the Billabong Pro Mundaka: surfing legend Marc “Occy” Occylupo (Australia ), local charger Hodei Collazo (Basque Country) and rising star Marcos San Segundo (Basque Country).

More information about rankings, surfer profiles and the tour can be found on aspworldtour.com.

The opening of the Billabong Pro Mundaka sees a truly traditional show with dances and music. At the start and end of the competition, surfers and officials will be greeted by the Aurresku, an honorific and traditional dance, and the 2008 winner will be carried by the local surf club members to be thrown in the port.

Winners always accept their trophy wearing a wetsuit and a newly-won Txapela (a traditional large hat)! That is the price to pay to have your name carved in the white stone of the perpetual Billabong Pro trophy. The Billabong Pro Mundaka is supported by Euskaltel, Kustom, Von Zipper, Nixon, Yamaha and Cobra Jetski, as well as the villages of Mundaka and Sopelana with their respective Surf Clubs and the EHSF.

.... ... .

Boise's Basque Winefest

This article comes to us via The Idaho Statesman:

AUG. 15: BASQUE MUSEUM AND CULTURAL CENTER'S WINEFEST

One of the oldest and most popular wine festivals in the Treasure Valley is the Basque Museum and Cultural Center's Winefest. Now in its 11th year, the outdoor event will be held on Friday, Aug. 15, starting at 5:30 p.m. at Downtown Boise's Basque Block (Grove Street between Capitol Boulevard and 6th Street).

Selected Idaho wineries and distributors will be on hand offering tasting samples of their wines. Each ticket-holding adult will be given a commemorative glass to use for the tastings and to enjoy a full glass of wine if they wish to purchase one.

There'll also be plenty of food on hand from the Basque Block's restaurants, including Gernika Basque Pub & Eatery, Leku Ona Basque Restaurant, The Basque Market and Bardenay Restaurant and Distillery.

The event is so popular that more than 500 people attended last year. "This is the Basque Museum's largest fundraising event of the year," said festival chairwoman Diana Echeverria.

"The money raised supports the Basque Museum's mission of educational programs and community outreach," said Patty Miller, executive director of the museum.

Miller also points out that one of the highlights of this year's Winefest will be a performance by the Oinkari Basque Dancers. The group was organized nearly 50 years ago and has been pleasing crowds ever since with colorful, ethnic costumes and authentic Basque instruments. The performance is scheduled for 7 p.m.

There will be a silent auction, as well, for a wide variety of items donated by local businesses and wine distributors.

.... ... .

Basque Pala

This note comes to us from Boise where the Basque festival is taking place, here it is:

Basque pala takes agility, strength

The cousin of racquetball is a centerpiece of the San Inazio Festival

Tucked behind a law office and Bar Gernika in the Basque Block is a spacious warehouse you might expect to be associated the phrase "back-room deal."

Instead, during the Basque community's San Inazio Festival this weekend there will be a mix of raw power and refined agility encapsulated in pala, a sport from the Basque country.

Think doubles racquetball, but with the wall on the right side replaced with an out-of-bounds line. Replace the racquet with a wooden paddle and a hollow rubber ball with a solid rubber ball. That's pretty much pala.

Spectators sit on narrow bleachers near the court's right boundary line, close enough to the ball zipping back and forth to keep you on your toes.

Watching athletes who are built more like football players than tennis players dart, leap and lunge around a court 36 meters deep is a unique experience.

On Friday a series of matches - they play games to 35 points, which takes about 45 minutes - were held with players from a San Francisco club mixed in with local athletes.

On Saturday, the Boise and San Francisco will meet for the tournament finals at 4p .m.

Other festivities begin at 11 a.m. Saturday, including music, dance groups, band, weight lifting and a tug-of-war between Boise and Meridian police. On Sunday, there is a street dance from 7 to 11 p.m.

Source : Idaho Statesman

.... ... .

San Inazio Festival in Boise

This information comes to us via "The Idaho Statesman":

Weekend of festivities kicks off on the Basque Block Friday

BY KATY MOELLER
Edition Date: 07/24/08

A pala tournament and a good, old-fashioned tug-of-war between the Boise and Meridian police departments are two new features of the Boise Basque community's San Inazio Festival, which will be rocking the Basque Block this weekend.

The annual festival honors Saint Ignatius of Loyola, patron saint of the Basques and founder of the Jesuit religious order.

Traditional Basque food, music and dance are always highlights of the three-day festival, most of which occurs on the Basque Block along Grove Street between 6th and Capitol.

"This is the big weekend for us," said Tony Eiguren, co-owner of The Basque Market with his wife, Tara McElhose-Eiguren.

Visitors to The Basque Market can buy gift baskets this weekend that have paella rice, chocolate, tuna, olives and other items from the Basque region in Spain and France.

"A lot of what we sell is wine," Tony Eiguren said of the shop's Basque wines, which sell for about $7-$73 a bottle. Lan Rioja is one of the most popular, he said.

Jill Aldape, former dance director and president of the Oinkari Basque Dancers, encourages festival newcomers to try a cool drink called kalimotxo, which is red wine and cola on ice. Aldape will be singing in the Basque rock band, Amuma Says No (Grandmother Says No).

Her brother, John, president of the Boise Basque club Euzkaldunak, says you can't go wrong with a solomo sandwich.

"It's marinated pork with pimentos, served on bread. There's also chorizo (pork sausage)," he said. "We'll be selling them outside the Basque Center in a food booth."

The festivities kick off Friday morning with a pala tournament. Pala is game played on a three-walled court; players hit a rubber ball with wooden paddles.

Pala players from San Francisco and Chino, Calif., will play with Boise-area players. The court is between the Basque Museum and Gernika Basque Pub & Eatery.

The games, organized by Eusko Kirolak - or Basque Sports - will be broadcast on closed-circuit television in the Basque Center's bar and dance hall.

FESTIVAL DETAILS

The San Inazio Festival will rock Downtown Boise this weekend. Most of these activities will be on the Basque Block along Grove Street, between 6th Street and Capitol Boulevard.

Friday

9 a.m.-7 p.m., pala tournament (pala is a game akin to racquetball and squash). Players are from San Francisco, Chino, Calif., and the Boise area.

5 p.m.- midnight, no-host bar.

Saturday

11 a.m.-noon, local Basque musicians

Noon-1 p.m., Boiseko Gazteak, youth dance group

1-1:30 p.m., Txantxangorriak, a band that features accordions and tambourines.

1:30-2:30 p.m., weight-lifting exhibition

2:30-3:30 p.m., Oinkari Basque Dancers

3:30-4 p.m., Sokatira (tug-of-war) between Boise Police Department and Meridian Police Department; Txinga (weightlifting) exhibition.

4-5:30 p.m., Pala championship games.

7-8:30 p.m., San Inazio Mass at St. John's Cathedral. Onati Dantza Taldea dancers will dance at Mass.

Sunday

7-11 p.m., street dance.

8-11 p.m., Basque rock band Amuma Says No.

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Art Imitates Life?

This is one case in which you can't tell if life imitates art or if it is the other way around.

The current Spanish government, an alleged democracy that never really broke clean from Franco's regime (numerous Francoist ministers continued with business as usual after the death of their leader) keeps Basque political prisoners in jail long after they have completed their sentences.

So what can we expect from the request by the Basque society to change the location of the painting that depicts one of the darkest hours in their history? Nothing but excuses, absurd excuses.

This is the must recent chapter in the saga of a painting that has been abducted by the very same government that ordered the bombing of Gernika, a government that even today refuses to acknowledge Spain's part in this war crime, let alone apologize. Two media outlets have reported the note so far, here you have the version by The Telegraph from England:

Pablo Picasso's Guernica 'too fragile to move'

By Fiona Govan, Madrid Correspondent

Last Updated: 9:33PM BST 20/07/2008

Pablo Picasso's famous masterpiece Guernica is in a "stable but serious" condition, art experts have concluded after an exhaustive study.

The monochrome canvas that epitomises the horror of modern warfare had "suffered a lot and requires special care," said the head of restoration at Madrid's modern art museum.

The conclusions made following the first detailed examination of the artwork in ten years will disappoint those in the Basque country who hoped that the iconic artwork would one day be returned to its spiritual home.

Officials in the Basque country have long argued that the piece which depicts the destruction of the Basque village of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War should be displayed in the region.

But curators have declared that its state is so fragile that any attempt to move it from its current location at Madrid's Reina Sofia would be impossible.

Even more restoration on the canvas would risk further damage.

Picasso was inspired to create the work after reading reports of the atrocity carried out by German bombers supporting the Right-wing forces of Gen Francisco Franco.

The attack on April 26, 1937, levelled the historic town during a busy market day causing an estimated 1,650 deaths.

The painting also symbolises the struggle for democracy in Spain. Picasso arranged for the Museum of Modern Art in New York to keep the work for as long as Franco was in power.

The black and white canvas, which is 11ft tall and 26ft wide, was finally moved to Spain in 1981, six years after the death of the dictator, and has remained in Madrid moving to its current location at the Renia Sofia in 1992.

So let me get this straight, Spaniards order the bombing, Spaniards cover up the crime and Spaniards decide the Guernica should not be moved to Euskal Herria. Whoa, that is what I call fair and square.

Oh, by the way, did you know that it was Francisco Franco who ushered Sophia to her position as queen of the Spaniards? Yes, that is where the museum gets its name, from the wife of Juan Carlos, Francisco Franco's king, the one in charge of keeping things "tied, neatly tied".

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Basquephobe of the Week : Martti Ahtisaari

Meet Martti Ahtisaari, our Basque-phobe of the week.

The press calls this individual by terms like peace-maker and conflict mediator. His resume includes work in high profile cases like Northern Ireland, Aceh and Kosovo, yet, when it comes to Euskal Herria his response is no, nyet, nein, the Basques do not deserve their independence because he says so.

He is so ignorant in this matter that he thinks that Euskal Herria is occupied only by Spain, not a word about France. Then he insists that Euskal Herria does not deserve its freedom like Kosovo because "the history of both regions is diametrically different". But then he does not care to elaborate why are they so different because then people would figure out that it is precisely because of their history that it is hard to deny freedom to the Basques while granting it to the Kosovars.

After saying that the Basques in their obsession to put forward their invalid call for freedom would go to the extreme of claiming Kosovo as a precedent even if Kosovo was located in a different planet (just try to imagine the amount of euro-pesetas Madrid paid Ahtisaari to say something like that) he goes on to say that it was Milosevic's genocidal campaign in Kosovo what set the background for Kosovo's independence.

What about Francisco Franco? Being a protege of Hitler and Mussolini, bombing the civilian populations of Durango and Gernika, executing hundreds of gudaris after Bilbao's armistice, banning Basque culture and language throughout his four decade reign of terror does not count someone as a criminal like Milosevic? He was worst than Milosevic!

And what about his excuse that the history of Euskal Herria and Kosovo being diametrically different?

Actually it is, Francisco Franco murdered more Basques than Milosevic did Kosovars while perpetuating a 500 year genocidal campaign by Castile/Spain against Euskal Herria.

The note with Ahtisaari's statements comes to us via BalkanInsight:

Ex-Envoy: Kosovo Not Precedent for Basques

23 June 2008 Pristina _ Kosovo’s independence is absolutely no precedent for Spain’s Basque Country, the former UN envoy for Kosovo’s final status, Martti Ahtisaari argues.

Ahtisaari dismissed any connection between Kosovo’s independence and any move towards separatism by Spain’s Basque country saying that the history of both regions is diametrically different.

“Perhaps some people try to turn Kosovo into a precedent and use it so but they would do so even if Kosovo was from another planet,” Ahtisaari told Spanish daily, El Pais.

Appointed by the United Nations Secretary General, Ahtisaari facilitated two-year talks between Belgrade and Pristina over the final settlement of Kosovo’s political status, which has been administered by the UN for nine years since the end of the war between Serb military forces and ethnic Albanian majority in 1999.

At the end of negotiations, Ahtisaari proposed a comprehensive proposal for Kosovo’s ‘supervised independence’ with exclusive rights and provisions for minorities, particularly Kosovo Serbs.

However the internationally-mediated talks failed to produce a mutually-agreed solution, since Serbia insisted on keeping Kosovo under its sovereignty as an autonomous region, while Kosovo asked for nothing less than independence. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on February 17 based on Ahtisaari’s blueprint.

Twenty out of twenty-seven European Union member states have recognised Kosovo’s independence so far but countries like Spain, Romania or Cyprus refuse to do so, arguing that the move violated international law.

Madrid is particularly concerned that Kosovo’s independence sets a bad example for its autonomous provinces, particularly the Basque Country, where demands among Basque hardliners for independence has led to decades of sporadic bombings and shootings.

Recently Britain’s former Minister for Europe, Denis MacShane wrote in an editorial that Spain was lobbying against the recognition of Kosovo’s independence in Latin American countries. Read more: http://balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/11190

“When in the case of Kosovo one defends the international legality, one does not say that it was Slobodan Milosevic who unconstitutionally annulled the autonomy of Kosovo and illegally ordered the slaughters and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Albanians,” Ahtisaari told El Pais.

He said Serbia lost Kosovo as a consequence of the policies of former Serb strongman Milosevic, and that the international community must now help Serbs understand that there is no way back and nothing will change.

Ahtisaari added that EU countries who now oppose the statehood of Kosovo had declared during the final status negotiations that the Kosovo case is unique.

Well, if it is of any consolation for Ahtisaari, his hatred towards the Basques is anything but unique.

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Euskal Herria Beyond Iruñea

This article comes to us via North Shore News:

Beyond Pamplona

Jon Azpiri
North Shore News

Sunday, June 08, 2008

PAMPLONA, Spain: You can blame Ernest Hemingway. Thanks to his seminal 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises, the Fiesta de San Fermín in Pamplona has gone from a small local event to a worldwide phenomenon.

The book, which chronicles the exploits of so-called Lost Generation as they try to find themselves while travelling through Europe, has inspired countless young foreigners to take part in the Running of the Bulls, an adrenaline-filled and sometimes bloody rite of passage where revelers run alongside charging bulls down the narrow cobble-stoned streets of the Basque city.

Hemingway returned to Pamplona in 1959 and felt that it had become a victim of its own success. "I've written Pamplona once and for keeps," he wrote in a later book, The Dangerous Summer. "It is all there as it always was except forty thousand tourists have been added. There were not 20 tourists when I first went there nearly four decades ago. Now on some days they say there are close to a hundred thousand in the town.''

Indeed, Hemingway's writing helped draw untold thousands of visitors to the Basque city. His description of San Fermín makes it seem like a singular experience that can't be found anywhere else in the world. What most travellers to Pamplona never discover is that San Fermín is hardly unique. During the summer, there are numerous weekend festivals throughout the Basque Country bordering France that also feature all the music, wine, and machismo that made Pamplona famous.

For most young Basques, nightlife doesn't consist of hitting a local pub or nightclub. Instead, they head out to a nearby town for an all-night street party. The activity is so common that the Basques even have a word for it: gaupasa, which means to party until sunrise.

Most festivals in the Basque Country were originally intended as a celebration of a town's patron saint, although it's hard these days to find much in the way of pious spirituality. Instead, the festivals revolve around several days of music, dance, sports, and plenty of kalimotxo -- a Basque concoction that consists of equal parts red wine and Coca-Cola. There's plenty of food as well: groups of friends get together to cook large paellas that they share with passers-by along with homemade sangria, which is often served out of a large garbage can.

A couple of weeks after festivities wrap up in Pamplona, the Fiesta de la Madalena signals the start of the summer festival season in the Basque province of Vizcaya, located on the Bay of Biscay, 100 kilometres to the northwest. The festival revolves around the nearby island of Izaro, which was once the centre of a battle between the neighbouring towns of Bermeo and Mundaka. Both towns laid claim to the island and the dispute was settled in a typically Basque way: a boat race.

On July 22, 1919, the two towns held a regatta to decide which town would get the rights and since then the inhabitants of Bermeo have organized an annual a torch-lit convoy of boats there to commemorate their victory and re-stake their claim. Surprisingly, no one in the rival town of Mundaka is particularly broken up about the loss. This laid-back surfing town, with reputedly one of the longest left breaks in the world, parties just as hard as its former rival.

The nearby town of Elantxobe had nothing to do with the battle over Izaro, but celebrates its patron saint, María Magdalena, on the same day as the regatta; so they join in the party. Like most Basque festivals, Las Madalenas seems to take up every square inch of public space in Elantxobe, a fishing village precipitously located on a slope overlooking Cape Ogoño.

In the town harbour, rows of makeshift snack bars serve kalimotxo as well as chorizo, tortilla, and blood sausage, and there's plenty of entertainment ranging from punk rock to traditional Basque folk music complete with accordions, flutes, and tambourines. Others entertain themselves by watching inebriated party-goers trying to make their way down the town's steep cobble-stoned streets without falling on their faces.

A few weeks later, the town of Guernica (spelled Gernika in Basque), 14 km inland from Elantxobe has its Fiesta de Andra Mari. Guernica is considered to be the spiritual capital of the Basque people but is best-known world-wide as the target of a 1937 aerial attack by the Luftwaffe. This was the inspiration for Pablo Picasso's most famous work, Guernica, which has come to symbolize the horrors of armed conflict.

Walking through Guernica during its fiesta in August, it's now difficult to picture this sunny town as the location for one of the world's most notorious war crimes. The streets are lined with lively cafes and restaurants that brim over with patrons during the fiesta. The local jai alai court is also packed as fans watch the ancient Basque game where players hurl a rubber ball against a wall using a curved wicker basket attached to one hand. The tournament during Andra Mari is considered one of the world's best. At night, locals take to the town's windy streets in costumes for a night of Halloween-like festivities. The only image that most of the world has of Guernica is that of Picasso's stark black-and-white mural, but during the Fiesta of Andra Mari, you can't help but be overwhelmed by colour.

One of the biggest festivals to mark the end of summer is the Fiesta de San Antolín in Lekeitio, a fishing village 25 km northeast of Guernica near the Bay of Biscay. geographical hint. Like many other festivals, Lekeitio's September celebration features a strongman competition based on the Basque rural tradition. Contests consist of cutting tree trunks with crosscut saws, spinning around 360 kg horse carts, and a relay race where the runners carry 80 kg sacks of corn rather than a baton. There are also countless other competitions that involve lifting everything from boulders, anvils, and bales of hay.

On September 5, thousands of people gather around the waterfront to watch competitors as they hang off a dead goose while being dunked into the town harbour. A long rope is suspended from the harbourside to the mast of a boat, then teams of men in small rowboats position themselves beneath it and one designated person grabs the goose and jumps off the boat. Those at the harbour's edge then whip the rope up and down, repeatedly dunking the man into the water from a height of more than ten metres.

For those who think that hanging off a rope is hardly a substitute for the visceral thrills of Pamplona, there's always the Fiesta de San Roque in Deba, Gipuzkoa, a coastal town 20 km east of Lekeitio. The small seaside town is one of many outside Pamplona that also offer you the chance to get trampled by a bull in the middle of the street.

But one thing you won't have to worry about is getting trampled by other tourists. Like Pamplona during Hemingway's time, there likely won't be more than 20 foreigners in the entire town.

If you go:

The Basque Country is located in the Pyrenees Mountains that straddle the border of France and northern Spain. Bilbao, the largest city in the region, has daily flights from London and Madrid, or is a four-hour drive from the Spanish capital. Other festivals include:

Aste Nagusia -- Bilbao (August 16-24). The city shuts down for an entire week to celebrate "Big Week". As its name suggests, the festival offers everything a regular fiesta would but on a much larger scale with more than 100,000 revelers partying in the streets of the Basque country's largest city.

Tolosako Iñauteriak --Tolosa (April-May). Something like a Mardi Gras in reverse, this festival takes place 40 days after Easter. It even has its own "Fat Thursday" to kick off six days of intense partying, including a wild parade held on Sunday. The festival ends the following Tuesday with the Asteartita, or "Burial of the Sardine."

Barte Fiestain -- Larrea (July 4). While Americans celebrate their independence, this town in the province of Alava celebrates a loaf of bread. The festival revolves around the old legend of how a Larrea local sold the people from the neighbouring village of Ermua an image of St. Martin in ex-change for a loaf of bread known as a barte. During the festival, people from Larrea head to the church to visit St. Martin. After mass, they break bread with their neighbours and party until dawn.

Note: Iruñea is the Basque name for Pamplona, so, where it reads "Pamplona, Spain" it should read instead "Iruñea, Euskal Herria".

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