Allowed to Participate

Seems like clown judge Baltasar Garzón has discovered the sliced bread. He says that there is no links between ANV to ETA nor to Batasuna. All of this charade framed within the Franco style Spanish Law of Political Parties, a painful reminder that in Spain the political class is all too kin on slipping back to the authoritarian style regimes of their recent past.

Here you have the article that appeared at Yahoo News:

Spain allows Basque party to operate, says no links to ETA

Sat Apr 28, 4:45 PM ET

A recently revived Basque political party will be allowed to operate after Spanish authorities could find no links to the armed group ETA or its outlawed political wing, a top judge said Saturday.

The Eusko Abertzale Akintza-Action Nationalist Basque party (EAE-ANV) can legally operate and will not be subject to the ban applying to the Batasuna party, judge Baltasar Garzon ruled.

He based his judgment on a police report that said, "We cannot determine that ANV is an instrument of ETA-Batasuna, even though it has some affinities in terms of its goals."

Garzon said in a written decision that certain elements of the party seem to show "the proximity, the influence and the possible participation of Batasuna ... in the preparation of electoral lists." But he said the party's leaders did not have links with ETA.

The EAE-ANV was one of the founding elements of Batasuna in 1978, but had been inoperative until recently. Its sudden revival to put up candidates for May 27 municipal and regional elections aroused suspicions that ETA's political wing was trying to sneak into the polls.

Batasuna has been prohibited as a party since 2003 because of its ties to ETA, which has been blamed for over 800 deaths in its four-decade campaign to achieve independence for the Basque region in northern Spain and southern France.

ETA's political arm won 10 percent of the vote in regional elections in 2001 and 20 percent in 1999 municipal elections.

In March, Batasuna presented a new party, Abertzale Sozialisten Batasuna, to contest the May elections, but it too is expected to be banned, as are supposedly apolitical "citizen lists" inspired by Batasuna.

A candidate on one of the lists, Gorka Murillo, was ordered detained by Garzon Saturday for suspected membership of ETA, following his arrest in the northern province of Navarra.

Documents allegedly found at his home included photographs of Spanish military vehicles, suggesting possible targets for a new armed ETA unit said to have been smashed by police at the end of last March.

Batasuna leader Joseba Permach said Saturday the pro-independence movement's absence from elections would mean "an enormous failure" for the peace process, according to Basque newspaper Gara.

ETA declared a permanent ceasefire in March last year that was shattered by a December 30 bombing at Madrid airport. The bombing wrecked tentative attempts by Spain's socialist government to engage in a dialogue with ETA on reaching a political settlement for the region's future.

Amazing, check out this paragraph by renown torturer Garzón:"even though it has some affinities in terms of its goals."

Those goals being the goals of a large portion of the Basque people, the self determination of their nation. So, by that reasoining, every single Basque that wishes for his or her country to be free from the occupation of Spain and France has affinities with ETA, what a twisted logic I would say, but that is infamous judge Garzón for you.

And how about the last paragrpah, it is useless to try to get these so called journalists to stop repeating the propaganda that Madrid feeds them.

~ ~ ~

About the Gernika Bombing from Down-Under

This article appeared at The Australian:

Horror of city bombing writ in black and white

Picasso's Guernica remains one of the world's most potent anti-war protests, writes Ben Macintyre

April 28, 2007

PICKING through the still-smoking ruins of Guernica, exactly 70 years ago Thursday, George Lowther Steer came across a handful of bomb cases stamped with the German imperial eagle. Here was final proof that the planes that had rained incendiary bombs on the Basque town a day earlier - April 26, 1937 - were sent by Nazi Germany in support of Franco's Nationalists to crush Basque morale.

Steer's damning report exposing the lie of German neutrality in the Spanish Civil War ignited another sort of firestorm. "In the form of its execution and the scale of the destruction it wrought, no less than in the selection of its objective, the raid on Guernica is unparalleled in military history," Steer wrote.

Franco's fascist allies in Germany and Italy had deliberately targeted a defenceless civilian population, killing an estimated 1600 people. This was the first saturation bombing on European soil; the age of total war had arrived.

Far away in Paris, Pablo Picasso read the newspaper reports and saw the black-and-white photographs of Guernica's destruction. Outraged, revolted and looking for a subject to fulfil his commission for the international exhibition in Paris, within six weeks Picasso created Guernica, the huge black-and-white mural of death and terror that still stands as the most potent symbol of modern war's barbarity.

From Paris the great painting set off, like an international star, on a tour of Europe and the US to raise money for the Republican cause. At the Whitechapel art gallery in London, the price of admission was a pair of boots in reasonable condition to be sent to Republican soldiers at the front. Working men left the gallery barefoot, having placed their boots beneath the picture, as if at a shrine.

No artwork has achieved such a transformation so swiftly: from reality to journalism to art to worldwide celebrity in the space of just a few months. Franco made it a criminal offence to own a postcard of the picture. Guernica forged an instant mythology: it was said that when Paris was under Nazi occupation, a German officer visited Picasso's studio looking for evidence of resistance activity, and pointed to a photograph of Guernica on the wall. "Did you do this?" he asked. "No," replied Picasso. "You did."

The painting reflected the civilised world's revulsion at a new type of mechanical warfare. Picasso painted Guernica in a state of shock and wonder. To Steer, the journalist, surveying the devastation, the decision to kill civilians from the air seemed strange and horrible, a reversal of accepted military rules. Indeed, so improbable did the bombing appear that Franco denied it had happened and insisted that the Republicans had torched the town themselves.

From a distance of 70 years, however, the scenes that inspired Picasso seem grimly familiar. After Guernica came the London Blitz, Dresden, Hiroshima, Hanoi and Baghdad. The bombing of civilians is an accepted, indeed a central element of warfare, despite the euphemisms of strategic bombing and collateral damage. When the Luftwaffe's Condor Legion swept down on undefended Guernica, it was pioneering the use of shock and awe.

But if Guernica is a condemnation of war, it is also a peculiar symbol of peace. Having first offered it "to the Basque people" (an offer rejected by the president of the Basque country), Picasso stated that the painting should never return to Spain until fascism had been eradicated from his homeland. Sure enough, in 1981, six years after Franco's death, Guernica returned to a democratic Spain. Picasso declared that he had painted Guernica to "express my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death".

The painting has lost none of it power to embarrass the military caste. A tapestry copy of Guernica hangs in the UN building, outside the Security Council meeting room. In 2003, when Colin Powell came to the UN to make the case for war, the image was discreetly swathed in a blue shroud.

How could the US general make the case for bombing Baghdad with the most powerful indictment of aerial bombing openly accusing him a few yards away? A UN spokesman claimed the Guernica had been covered up because television cameras needed a bolder backdrop than Picasso's subtle greys.

The truth, however, is that Picasso's denunciation is still as black and white as it was seven decades ago.

The Times

One little detail though, democracy is yet to return to Spain, unless you can call democracy a state where torture, random detentions, banning of political parties and shutdowns of newspapers are the rule and not the exception. And on top, Franco's followers are still trying to crush the Basques.

~ ~ ~

Navarre According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica

This information comes to us thanks to Txabi:

Navarre

NAVARRE (Span. Navarra), an inland province of northern Spain, and formerly a kingdom which included part of France. The province is bounded on the N. by France (Basses Pyrenees) and Guipuzcoa, E. by Huesca and Saragossa, S. by Saragossa and Logrono and W. by Alava.

It is traversed from east to west by the Pyrenees and the Cantabrian Mountains, and almost the whole of the province is overrun by the ramifications of these ranges. From Navarre there are only three practicable roads for carriages into France - those by the Puerta de Vera, the Puerta de Maya and Roncesvalles. The highest summit in the province is the Monte Adi (4931 ft.). The chief river flowing towards the Atlantic is the Bidasoa, which rises near the Puerta de Maya, and after flowing southwards through the valley of Baztan takes a north-easterly course, and for a short distance above its outfall at Fuenterrabia constitutes the frontier between France and Spain (Guipuzcoa); by far the larger portion of Navarre is drained to the Mediterranean through the Ebro, which flows along the western frontier and crosses the extreme south of the province. The hilly districts consist almost entirely of forest and pasture, the most common trees being the pine, beech, oak and chestnut. Much of the lower ground is well adapted for agriculture, and yields grain in abundance; the principal fruit grown is the apple, from which cider is made in some districts; hemp, flax and oil are also produced, and mulberries are cultivated for silkworms. The wine trade is active, and the products of the vineyards are in great demand in south-west France and at Passages in Guipuzcoa for mixing with French wines. Navarre is one of the richest provinces of Spain in live stock. Game, both large and small, is plentiful in the mountains, and the streams abound with trout and other fish. Gypsum, limestone, freestone and marble are quarried; there are also mines of copper, lead, iron, zinc and rock salt. Mineral and thermal springs are numerous, but none is of more than local fame. The other industries include manufactures of arms, paper, chocolate, candles, alcohol, leather, coarse linens and cloth. The exports both by rail and by the passes in the Pyrenees consist of live stock, oil, wine, wool, leather and paper.

The Ebro Valley railway, which traverses southern Navarre and skirts the western frontier, sends out a branch line from Castejon to Pamplona and Alsasua junction, where it connects with the Northern railways from Madrid to France. Narrowgauge railways convey timber and ore from the mountains to these main lines. Pamplona, the capital (pop., 1900, 28,886), and Tudela (9449) are described in separate articles. The only other towns with more than 5000 inhabitants are Baztan (9234), Corella (6793), Estella (5736) and Tafalla (5494).

History. - The kingdom of Navarre was formed out of a part of the territory occupied by the Vascones, i.e. the Basques and Gascons, who occupied the southern slope of the western Pyrenees and part of the shore of the Bay of Biscay. In the course of the 6th century there was a considerable emigration of Basques to the north of the Pyrenees. The cause is supposed to have been the pressure put upon them by the attacks of the Visigoth kings in Spain. Yet the Basques maintained their independence. The name of Navarre is derived by etymologists from "nava" a flat valley surrounded by hills (a commonplace name in Spain; cf. Navas de Tolosa to the south of the Sierra Morena) and "erri" a region or country. It began to appear as the name of part of Vasconia towards the end of the Visigoth epoch in Spain in the 7th century. Its early history is more than obscure. In recent times ingenious attempts have been made to trace the descent of the first historic king of Navarre from one Semen Lupus, duke of Aquitaine in the 6th century. The reader may consult La Vasconie by Jean de Jaurgain (Paris, 1898) for the latest example of this reconstruction of ancient history from fragmentary and dubious materials. Jaurgain has been subjected to very damaging criticism by L. Barrau-Dihigo (Revue Hispanique, t. vii. 141). The first historic king of Navarre was Sancho Garcia, who ruled at Pamplona in the early years of the 10th century. Under him and his immediate successors Navarre reached the height of its power and its extension (see Spain: History, for the reign of Sancho el Mayor, and the establishment of the Navarrese line as kings of Castile and Leon, and of Aragon). When the kingdom was at its height it included all the modern province of the name; the northern slope of the western Pyrenees called by the Spaniards the "Ultra-puertos" or country beyond the passes, and now known as French Navarre; the Basque provinces; the Bureba, the valley between the Basque Mountains and the Montes de Oca to the north of Burgos; the Rioja and Tarazona in the upper valley of the Ebro. In the 12th century the kings of Castile gradually annexed the Rioja and Alava.

While Navarre was reunited to Aragon -1076-1134- (see Spain: History) it was saved from aggression on the east, but did not recover the territory taken by Castile. About the year 1200 Alfonso VIII of Castile annexed the other two Basque provinces, Biscay (Vizcaya) and Guipuzcoa. Tarazona remained in possession of Aragon. After 1234 Navarre, though the crown was claimed by the kings of Aragon, passed by marriage to a succession of French rulers. In 1516 Spanish Navarre was finally annexed by Ferdinand the Catholic. French Navarre survived as an independent little kingdom till it was united to the crown of France by Henry IV founder of the Bourbon dynasty. From 1510 until 1833, when it was fully incorporated with Spain, Navarre was a viceroyalty.

As originally organized, Navarre was divided into Merindades, or districts, governed by a Merino (mayorino) as representative of the king. They were the Ultrapuertos (French Navarre), Pamplona, Estella, Judela, Sanguesa. In 1407 Olite was added. The Cortes of Navarre began with the king's council of churchmen and nobles. But in the course of the 14th century the burgesses were added. Their presence was due to the fact that the king had need of their co-operation to raise money by grants and aids. When fully constituted, the Cortes consisted of the churchmen, the nobles and the representatives of twenty-seven "good towns" - that is to say, towns which had no feudal lord, and, therefore, held directly of the king. In the later stages of its history the Cortes of Navarre included the representatives of thirty-eight towns. The independence of the burgesses was better secured in Navarre than in other parliaments of Spain by the constitutional rule which required the consent of a majority of each order to every act of the Cortes. Thus the burgesses could not be outvoted by the nobles and the Church. Even in the 18th century the Navarrese successfully resisted the attempt of the kings of the Bourbon dynasty to establish custom houses on the French frontier. Yet they were loyal to their Spanish sovereigns, and no part of the country offered a more determined or more skilful resistance to Napoleon. Navarre was much under clerical influence. This, and the resentment felt at the loss of their autonomy when they were incorporated with the rest of Spain in 1833, account for the strong support given by many Navarrese to the Carlist cause.

They better watch out at the Britannica, über-Francoist Mariano Rajoy could accuse them of apology of terrorism for saying that Navarre was the ancient kingdom of the Basques and that the Navarrese fought long wars against Spain and France to remain independent.

~ ~ ~

Gernika's 70th Anniversary

This note appeared today at Yahoo News:

Guernica marks 70 years since historic air raid

Thu Apr 26, 11:07 AM ET

The Basque town of Guernica marked the 70th anniversary on Thursday of its destruction by German warplanes backing the right-wing forces of General Francisco Franco during Spain's Civil War.

Basque flags adorned the mayor's office and some inhabitants draped their balconies in black as survivors of the attack attended commemorative ceremonies.

A declaration called "Guernica for Peace" was read in various languages in the presence of representatives of other cities destroyed in war such as Hiroshima in Japan, Dresden in Germany, Warsaw and Volgograd, the former Stalingrad.

The Guernica bombing "is the mirror in which all the bombings and all the injustices are reflected, which makes us think of all the 30 wars that are going on right now on our planet," the declaration said.

A mass, concert and wreath-laying for those who died in the attack by the Nazis' Condor Legion aircraft, which killed hundreds and leveled three-quarters of the town on April 26, 1937, were also programmed.

"There was the humming of planes and then the blasts and the heat from the firebombs. I could think of only one thing: survival," Luis Iriondo, a survivor of the attack who was 14 at the time, told AFP ahead of Thursday's event.

Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980 for his resistance to Argentina's so-called Dirty War against leftist rebels, also attended the event in Guernica, a town of some 16,000 people.

He encouraged the Spanish government to continue seeking ways, "despite everything" of making peace with separatist Basque organisation ETA.

Ahead of the commemorations Basque regional president Juan Jose Ibarretxe demanded that the central government in Madrid apologise to the Basque people for the attack and condemn Franco's dictatorship.

Earlier in the day Ibarretxe and Guernica mayor Miguel Angel Aranaz opened an exhibition on the bombing, which includes images of the attack and a virtual tour of Guernica, before and after the destruction.

Franco ruled Spain with an iron fist after the three-year civil war which ended in 1939. Some half a million people died in the conflict. Franco ruled until his death in 1975.

Most historians believe Guernica was targeted by Franco because it is a centre of Basque nationalism and cultural traditions.

The town was once home to an oak tree which Spanish kings would stand beneath and vow to respect an ancient code giving the independent-minded Basques special rights.

The tree survived the bombing but died during a heatwave in 2003 and was replaced two years later.

Thursday's anniversary has also led to renewed calls for Picasso's painting "Guernica", which was inspired by the attack, to be put on display in the town.

The black and white oil painting has been on display at the Reina Sofia modern art museum in Madrid since 1992.

Museum directors and the central government in Madrid turned down the request. They say the painting is to fragile to be moved.

Basque government officials said they would now try to have the painting moved to Guernica in time for the 75th anniversary of the attack, which heralded the area bombing of urban centres in World War II.

And while the Basques want to share this experience with the international community as an effort to find peaceful resolution to the different conflicts across our planets, the Spaniards did not even noticed the date so busy they are try to ban yet another Basque political party.

Oh yes, democracy is back in Spain.

How many more Gernikas before the Basque right to self determination is fully recognized by not only Spain and France but the international community?

~ ~ ~

Gernika in Our Minds

This article comes to us thanks to the Examiner:

Local

Guernica still on Basque minds

David Smith, The Examiner
Apr 27, 2007 3:00 AM

South San Francisco, Calif. - Basque locals gathered Thursday to plant a Spanish oak in Sister Cities Park to honor the 70th anniversary of the firebombing of Guernica, Spain, their community’s spiritual capital.

Members of the Basque Cultural Center in South San Francisco, as well as city officials, remembered the brutality inflicted by the bombing. Isabelle Bushman, vice president of the center, equated the bombing of Guernica to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“Here at the Basque Cultural Center we’re trying to make a bigger remembrance of it,” Bushman said.

On April 26, 1937, in the midst of the Spanish Civil War, planes from the German air force bombed civilians in the town using experimental incendiary bombs that decimated the town and left innocent men, women and children dead. The attack was immortalized by Pablo Picasso’s famous mural for the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris.

Phillippe Acheritogaray, a director with the center, said the significance of the bombing was that it was the first purposeful bombing of civilians, a practice that extended into World War II. The Germans were supporting Francisco Franco’s fascist group, which eventually overthrew the Spanish Republic.

Belmont resident Felix Bilbao, 89, was a 19-year-old in the Spanish Republican battalion at the time of the bombing and remembered the fires created by the German bombs. “There was fire, all over, and all night there was smoke,” Bilbao said.

The body count from the bombing ranges from 300 into the thousands, much like the count from San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake. To this day, Acheritogaray said, construction crews uncover corpses of animals and humans attributed to the date 70 years ago.

Jean Curutchet, 60, was born in San Francisco but moved to Esterencuby — French Basque country — when he was a baby. The date means “a lot of sad memories” for Basques across the world, he said.

“Every war has sad memories but when we bomb ladies and kids, it doubles the sadness,” he said.

dsmith@examiner.com

Examiner

Now, the real problem is that the situation has endured and today the Basques are as much victims of fascism as they were that day. The sad part is that the media does nothing to get the story straight and they continue to blindly quote what Madrid's tell them to say, just in this note we have this paragraph:

Basque locals gathered Thursday to plant a Spanish oak in Sister Cities Park to honor the 70th anniversary of the firebombing of Guernica, Spain, their community’s spiritual capital.

The author goes ahead and insists that Guernica is in Spain, despite the background of that infamous date in which Basques were slaughtered because Francisco Franco wanted to eliminate the recently created Basque Republic from the maps of Europe. Oh yes, and the Oak is Spanish, since when trees have an specific nationality?

Now, that Isabel Bushman does a complete disservice to Gernika when she equates the bombing with September 11. If she wants to draw a more accurate comparison she should compare it to the day Hitler told the world that Poland had destroyed a radio station in Germany, sparking the Nazi invasion of that Baltic state.

~ ~ ~

The Legacy

Here you have what the BBC has to say about the bombing of Gernika, now if they could stop calling us Basques by name of Spaniards it would be greatly appreciated

Here it is:

The legacy of Guernica

It is 70 years since the bombing of Guernica during Spain's Civil War. The BBC's Danny Wood visits the town to find out what the event means to Spaniards today.

Josefina Odriozola was a 14-year-old girl shopping in the market with her mother when German and Italian planes supporting the Fascist forces of Gen Franco closed in on the town.

"I remember it well," she says.

"We left everything in the market and went home. We lived just outside the town, but the bombing started and we were there in the main square. Three planes flew in full of bombs and then left empty. Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, until everything was burning."

Josefina is one of about 200 people, many in their 80s, who are still alive to describe what they witnessed on that day. Today, it is not the bombing that makes her most angry, but what followed.

"They burnt the city down with their planes and they denied they had done it - they blamed it on the Communists," she says.

"My sister was 13 years older than me and they told her that the Reds had destroyed Guernica. But she said: 'No, the Reds don't have planes.' And they said to her: 'You little Red, we're going cut all your hair off.' Why? Because she was telling the truth. We couldn't even say the truth about the attack."

Historical truth

That same concern with historical truth is on the minds of more and more Spaniards as the country marks the 70th anniversary. Spanish society is becoming more interested in knowing the full story about its recent history, from the Civil War to the death of dictator Gen Franco in 1975.

Jose Ortunez and his Guernica History Association have spent 30 years reconstructing the truth about what happened here in 1937. The forces of Gen Franco blamed the attack on their enemy in the Civil War: the Communist-backed Republican government.

Thanks partly to work by people like Jose, Spaniards know the truth, that the attack from the air was by German and Italian planes supporting General Franco.

Gen Franco wanted to terrorise the people in the Basque region, an area of strong resistance to his nationalist forces in the Civil War. For Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, it was an opportunity to get some practice with a new form of warfare: strategic, aerial bombing of civilians.

No strictly military objectives were touched. Factories and bridges were left alone - civilians were the only targets.

Ironically for a town almost completely destroyed by armed conflict, Guernica, before the Civil War and afterwards, continued to be a major production centre for bombs and automatic pistols.

The figures for the number of casualties in the bombing are still disputed, but most historians think between 200 and 250 people were killed and many hundreds wounded.

Positive message

The attack not only terrorised the people of Guernica. This methodical and well-planned destruction spread fear across Europe on the eve of World War II.

But today, Guernica is sending out a more positive message. Iratxe Astorkia, director of Guernica's Peace Museum, says the permanent exhibition of the museum aims to make the visitor reflect on three things: the nature of peace, what happened in Guernica 70 years ago and what happens nowadays with peace in the world.

The museum and its centre for investigation have converted Guernica into a world centre for peace studies and conflict resolution.

And for many Spaniards, Guernica is symbolic of the renewed interest in unearthing the truth about their own recent past.

"I think Guernica is a good example of not forgetting and trying to go further," says Ms Astorkia.

"More and more young people in Spain want to know about it. They lost their parents, their sisters their brothers and they didn't know much more than that."

Ms Astorkia partly blames the education system for ignorance about this period. Barely a few pages are devoted to Spain's Civil War in official school text books.

An estimated 30,000 people murdered during the Civil War still lie in mass graves. The government is preparing new legislation that will officially honour victims of the Franco regime for the first time.

Keeping the young informed

With survivors and witnesses of the bombing in their 80s, the challenge now is to convey the importance of Guernica to a new generation.

One witness who does a very good job of that, is Luis Iriondo. Seventy years ago, as a 14-year-old boy, Luis ran across Guernica's main square and found refuge from the bombs in a shelter.

Through a doorway is the wine cellar-like room where Luis found safety with dozens of others. He says it was completely dark and there was no ventilation, so after five minutes he could hardly breathe.

As the bombs started dropping he says he was terrified and expected to be buried alive.

"This bombardment lasted for three, maybe three and a half hours," he says.

"You could hear the bombs and feel the hot currents of air being forced away by the explosions. I tried to pray.

"Finally it finished, and I didn't really know what had happened, I knew that it was a bombardment and expected houses to be in ruins. But when I left the shelter I could see that everything was on fire."

Incendiary bombs had destroyed three quarters of the town. Luis fled to the hills and remembers looking back and seeing the buildings collapse. He says when he sees images of the twin towers falling down in New York, it reminds him of that day seven decades ago.

Iconic painting

Today, 84-year-old Luis thinks it's more important than ever to remember Guernica and its message:

"War doesn't solve anything," he says. "It just sows the seeds for more war. World War I led to World War II. The attack on Iraq - look where that's led."

Luis is an artist and talks in schools about his experience, encouraging children to paint what happened in Guernica. Back in Madrid, it is the artwork of one of the world's most famous painters that has helped bring Guernica's message to millions of people.

At the Reina Sofia Art Gallery, Pablo Picasso's Guernica is always surrounded by visitors, of all ages, both Spanish and foreign. But it was not always in the gallery.

Picasso would not allow it to return to Spain while the country was a dictatorship. For that reason, says the head of collections at the Reina Sofia, Javier de Blas, many Spaniards associate the work with their country's desire to be free of Gen Franco.

"It was a symbol of this construction of democracy," says Mr De Blas. "The whole world accepted that the country had recovered its political and social liberties in part because Picasso permitted the return of the painting to Spain."

For many, it is also a constant reminder of the truth that the Franco regime preferred to cover up.

"We're in an moment of reflection concerning everything that happened in our recent past," says Mr de Blas. "This painting continues to do transcendental things in order to bring us towards understanding the truth."

After the death of Franco in 1975, there was an agreement between the left and right of politics, not to critically examine the past.

But as the country marks 70 years since the bombing of Guernica, things seem to be changing. Many Spaniards feel that their transition to democracy will not be complete until they take a closer look at their recent history.

~ ~ ~

Too Good to Be True

Well, I found this note at Yahoo News:

Spain cracks open dictatorial past

By Lisa Abend, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Thu Apr 26, 4:00 AM ET

Vicente Muñiz was 4 years old when his parents were taken away. As Members of the Marxist Worker's Unification Party (POUM), they were arrested in the closing days of the Spanish Civil War for being political enemies of Francisco Franco's victorious Nationalists. In 1941, they were found guilty, executed for their "crimes," and buried in a mass grave.

Once the dictatorship ended in 1975, Muñiz tried to clear his parents' names. He convinced the Supreme Court to review their case, but the court ruled it could do nothing, because Muñiz's parents were fairly convicted by the law then in effect.

Now, Muñiz may get another chance. Last week, the ruling Socialist Party cleared the way for passage of their proposed Law of Historical Memory by agreeing to include a provision that would declare the political trials of the 36-year Franco dictatorship "illegitimate."

The decision marks the first time a Spanish government has publicly challenged the legality of the dictatorship. While other European countries began relatively soon after the end of World War II to prosecute citizens who had carried out atrocities and make amends to their victims, Spain has resisted investigations and reparations. Instead, when Franco died in 1975, parties across the political spectrum colluded in a "pact of silence" designed to ensure a peaceful transition to representative government. While Spain quickly became a constitutional democracy, it took almost 30 years before citizens dared speak of the old regime's abuses.

"The pact of silence was necessary for the Transition," says José María Pedreña, of the Forum for Memory, an organization dedicated to identifying Republican supporters killed or missing during the war and ensuing dictatorship. "But it meant that our democracy was flawed from the beginning, because it rested on the impunity of Franco's regime."

In the 1940s, hundreds of thousands of Spaniards were arrested, tried, and in many cases summarily executed for having supported the democratically elected Republican government during the civil war. Well into the 1960s and '70s, Franco's Tribunal of Public Order punished thousands found guilty of "rebellion." With only one exception, the families of those political prisoners, many of whom lost their homes and businesses as a result of their affiliation with the persecuted, have never managed to have the sentences overturned.

The original draft of the Law of Historical Memory, which among other things provides pensions for soldiers who fought in the Republican army and requires symbols of the Franco regime to be removed from public places, was opposed by parties on the left which felt it did not go far enough. As a result, the bill languished for more than four months. Now, with the Socialists' agreement to include a provision that denies the legitimacy of Franco's political trials, the United Left (IU), and the Catalan Green Initiative (ICV) have added their support, bringing with them enough votes to pass the law.

"This is the first time that a government in Spain's democracy has recognized that not just the coup d'état [which started the Civil War that would bring Franco to power], but the regime's persecution of political opponents was against the law," says Julián Casanova, a history professor at the University of Zaragoza.

Still the Socialists have stressed that the legislation does not automatically annul previous convictions. "This is a law that neither breaks anything, nor dredges up the past," said Vice President Maria Teresa Fernández de la Vega. "It simply recognizes and extends the rights of those people whose rights were harmed during the civil war and the dictatorship."

But many are convinced that it will have a judicial impact. "Our final objective is to nullify the sentences," says a source within the leadership of the United Left party. "We agreed to the legislation because we see the term "illegitimate" as the door that opens the way to annulment."

Already the regional government of Catalonia has announced that it will offer legal support to people who want to annul their relatives' sentences.

Some worry the new provision doesn't go far enough, however. "Declaring the courts illegitimate is not the same thing as declaring them illegal," says Mr. Pedreña, who is concerned that the provision does not require old sentences to be overturned nor provide family members with indemnification. "Plus, it does nothing to punish those criminals in the Franco regime who are still young enough to be working today."

Still, many are hopeful that the Law of Historical Memory is a step in the right direction. "The great problem of the Transition was that the victors' memory of the war outweighed that of the vanquished," says Professor Canovas. "By declaring the Franco trials 'illegitimate,' the law balances the historical memory."

In the Basque town of Guernica, which is on Thursday commemorating the 70th anniversary of the town's devastating bombing by a German air-force contingent working at Franco's behest, there is hope that the new law will right some of the last century's wrongs. "For so long the winners of the civil war manipulated the truth," says Iratxe Momoitio, director of Guernica's Museum of Peace. "Anything that helps people learn what really happened is positive. With a little education, maybe those terrible events won't be repeated."

Somehow this article reminded me of the "friend of the Basques", Basque-phobe Joe Gandelman, a Jewish-US citizen who used his stint as a TCSM in Spain to replicate all of the negative propaganda by Madrid against the Basques in the USA media.

But let us analyse the article for these are the parts I really like.

First, we learn that Spain's is far from being a place were people get fair treatment from the allegedly democratic institutions:

Once the dictatorship ended in 1975, Muñiz tried to clear his parents' names. He convinced the Supreme Court to review their case, but the court ruled it could do nothing, because Muñiz's parents were fairly convicted by the law then in effect.

Then, we find out that while the international media has been calling Spain by the title of "young democracy" for the last 30 years, not even Spaniards have such a high concept of it:

"The pact of silence was necessary for the Transition," says José María Pedreña, of the Forum for Memory, an organization dedicated to identifying Republican supporters killed or missing during the war and ensuing dictatorship. "But it meant that our democracy was flawed from the beginning, because it rested on the impunity of Franco's regime."

And please, let us remember that the party in the opposition that rejects this new law is the Partido Popular, a political party founded by former Franco ministers, a party that attracts and provides a safe haven for the extreme right in Spain.

Too bad Zapatero still refuses to apologize for Gernika. That would let the people know that he is serious about distancing his government from the cover ups by his own PSOE regarding the crimes commited by the Spanish Francoists and the Fascists.

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Irish Support to Segi

This note was found at An Phoblacht:

26 April, 2007

Other News

Ógra solidarity protest for SEGI

Belfast City Hall was the venue for an international solidarity protest by Ógra Shinn Féin, demanding an end to the repression of Basque Youth movement Segi.

The Spanish judiciary recently deemed the youth organisation as terrorist. Ógra Shinn Féin deemed the arrests as farcical and has called for the immediate release of the Segi members arrested.

Protesting Ógra activists distributed literature and added signatures to the online SEGI petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/SEGI/petition.html

Cúige Uladh Organiser, Johnny McGibbon commented, “The protest went very well, and it was clear activists made an impact on the public.

“Many passers-by questioned Ógra activists as to the motives for the protest, and many were duly horrified when they were given the information regarding the repression of Segi.”

One passer-by commented, “Flashbacks of internment” and another said “Same oppression different country!”

McGibbon continued: “The tactics of the Spanish Government are nothing short of a criminalisation policy and this has no prospect of success.

“As we know well in Ireland, and to quote the great Bobby Sands, ‘they have nothing in their whole imperial arsenal that can break the spirit’ of the determined young activists of Segi. We will stand in solidarity with them. Jo Ta Ke! Tiocfaidh Ár Lá!”

Nothing better on the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Gernika than some good international solidarity towards the Basque people.

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The Huffington Post and Gernika

The Huffington Post is a fair and balanced blog, an oddity in the US blogosphere.

In their post titled Seventy Years After Gernika they have this paragraph that is a real lesson for today's generations about how wrong things can go when war mongers call the shots, check it out:

But within a few short years the murder of innocents from the air at Guernica was dwarfed by the 45,000 civilians killed in Hamburg, the 100,000 civilians killed in Dresden, the 130,000 killed in Tokyo, and the 280,000 killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"The most powerful weapon of governments in raising armies," Zinn argues, "is the weapon of propaganda, of ideology. It must persuade young people, and their families, that though they may die, though they may lose arms or legs, or become blind, that it is done for the common good, for a noble cause, for democracy, for liberty, for God, for the country." Note the litany of reasons the Bush Administration gave for invading Iraq knowing its actions were going to kill tens of thousands of innocent people.

In early February 2003, a few days before Secretary of State Colin Powell gave his power-point presentation to the United Nations making the case that Saddam Hussein had "weapons of mass destruction," American officials demanded that a curtain be draped over the U.N.'s reproduction of Picasso's Guernica. They believed it would be inappropriate for Powell to make his pitch for aggressive war while standing in front of the 20th Century's most iconic protest against the inhumanity of war.

Now that the lies of the Bush Administration have been exposed -- from the WMDs and the Niger yellow cake, to the 9-11 links and even Jessica Lynch's Rambo story -- the Congress must begin investigating or impeaching every official who played a role in bringing the country to war.

Picasso's masterpiece inside the United Nations was there to give people the chance to think before plunging into another war. In the future, if diplomats want to throw a veil over this painting, we must firmly tell them that anything they have to say to the world's people can be said while standing in front of Guernica, or it doesn't need to be said at all.

How can we forget that José María Aznar, heir to the same regime responsible for the massacre at Gernika, was one of George W. Bush most ardent supporters in his case for war?

And how can we look the other way when we know that today the Partido Popular, a spawn of Franco's dictatorship, still calls the shots with the complicity of the PSOE when it comes to the negotiated solution to the Basque conflict?

But hey, when it comes to the Basques, no one dares to ask the tough questions.

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Shock and Awe

This commentary by Mark Kurlansky regarding Gernika and what it means in modern era's punitive strategy was published by Los Angeles Times:

70 years of 'shock and awe'

The 1937 air raid on the Basque city of Guernica ushered in the modern concept of total war

By Mark Kurlansky

MARK KURLANSKY often writes on Basque history and is the author, among many other books, of "The Basque History of the World." His most recent book is "Nonviolence: Twenty-five lessons from the History"

April 26, 2007

SEVENTY YEARS AGO, on April 26, 1937, at 4:40 in the afternoon when the stone-walled, medieval Basque town of Guernica was packed with peasants, shoppers and refugees for its Monday afternoon market along the riverfront, a church bell rang out. The townspeople had heard the warning before. It meant that enemy planes were approaching.

Since ancient times, Basques had gathered in this town under an oak tree to reaffirm their laws. Even today, the elected head of the Basque government travels to Guernica to take his oath of office under an oak tree, "humble before God, standing on Basque soil, in remembrance of Basque ancestors, under the tree of Guernica...."

This tree, a few thousand residents, the people who had come to the market and thousands of refugees from other parts of the Basque provinces who had fled the ongoing Spanish Civil War were the only targets. Oddly, the oak tree survived.

Because Guernica had no air defenses, dozens of planes from the German and Italian air forces, including the newest experimental warplanes, were free to come in low in daylight, dropping with great accuracy an unusual payload of incendiary and splinter bombs chosen by the Germans for maximum destruction of buildings. People who fled were chased down by planes with heavy-caliber machine guns. The planes came in so low that there are still eyewitnesses who remember seeing the pilots and who note that they looked like Germans.

Three hours later, the planes were gone, the historic town had been reduced to burning rubble and the Basque government estimated that 1,645 civilians were dead out of a population of 7,000. It's hard to know just how accurate that number is. The only ones who had a chance to accurately count the dead were the rebel troops of Francisco Franco - on whose behalf the German and Italian planes had swept in in the first place. They at first denied that the attack had taken place; later, they admitted to only 200 deaths. The records of what they actually found have never been released. But given the intensity of the attack, reports of survivors and the number of missing relatives, the Basque government figure has been recognized as at least being closer to the truth.

Two days after the attack, London Times correspondent George Steer's eyewitness account was published in the London Times and the New York Times, and the world responded with outrage at this new type of warfare - randomly attacking civilians from the air on a large scale. It was widely seen as a crime that should never be allowed to happen again.

It was not the first time civilians had been bombed from the air; not even the first time in the Spanish Civil War. Gen. Emilio Mola of Franco's pro-fascist rebel forces had vowed to destroy the Basque province of Viscaya for its fierce opposition to the insurgency. "Starting with the industries of war," he had said. But instead he started with the rural town of Durango, a town of ancient churches, rambling cobblestone streets and no industries of war. Next was Guernica.

Durango had passed with little notice, but Guernica did not. Pablo Picasso, who had been commissioned by the Spanish government to paint a mural for the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 Paris World's Fair, chose Guernica as his subject, and his stark depiction of mayhem and destruction permanently fixed this image of war in Western culture. To many previously apolitical Americans and Britons, it was the bombing of Guernica that convinced them of the brutality of fascism.

Historians argue whether the phrase "weapons of mass destruction" was first used about Guernica or Hiroshima. Steer wrote in the Times: "In the form of its execution and the scale of its destruction ... the raid ... is unparalleled in military history." But 70 years after Guernica - after the bombings of Coventry, London, Hamburg, Dresden, Berlin, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Hanoi, Hue, Beirut and Baghdad - it has become clear that modern war is fought from the air and that the greatest number of casualties are civilians.

Guernica was destroyed with 1937 state-of-the-art weaponry, the latest in German and Italian attack aircraft. But, of course, those weapons are primitive compared to what was unleashed on Baghdad for "shock and awe" at the start of the Iraq war. Shock and awe had also been the intention of the fascists in Spain. But such attacks on civilians today are met not so much with the outrage of 1937 but with casual television viewing.

On this, the 70th anniversary of the destruction of the little Basque village of Guernica, it would be good to contemplate the direction the world is going in and whether we want to continue or alter the course.

.... ... .