Gary Snapper

Bilbao Bloggings

The rain in Spain is mainly in Bilbao

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Guernica: Franco, Hitler, Picasso and the Sacred Oak of the Basques

6/4/2013

7 Comments

 
infanta! madonna! guernica! hiroshima!
    (From Study No X, by Pierre Coupey)

A couple of weeks ago, we made our first visit to Guernica (Gernika in Basque), 20 miles or so east of Bilbao. Gernika is the town which was bombed mercilessly by the Germans (at Franco´s behest) during the Spanish Civil War in 1937, in a kind of practice-run for the bombings of the second world war, and which inspired Picasso´s famous painting of the same name.
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Franco was out to get the Basques because anyone wanting to control Spain has to reckon with the Basques, who have never really wanted to be part of Spain (it's complicated....) and have retained a tight hold on their border-land, their language and their identity throughout their history. Franco wanted to consolidate his grasp on the whole country, and the Basques were not standing for it. So he decided to show them he meant business by enlisting Hitler to attack perhaps the most symbolically significant town in the Basque Country.
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Gernika is central to Basque culture as it´s where Basque leaders (‘Lehendakariak’) for centuries swore (under a sacred oak tree on the hill above the town) to respect the ‘fueros’, the ancient Basque ‘foral laws’ which guaranteed certain democratic and territorial rights to the Basque people.  These laws were often noted by philosophers and politicians of the past as being a forerunner of democratic constitutions. There’s a monument in Bilbao to the American president John Adams, for instance, who cited the Basque fueros as a major influence in the formation of the US constitution.
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Controversially, the fueros were suspended when the Spanish constitution of 1876 was introduced, after the complex Carlist Wars which focused on the Basque Country; but the Lehendakariak (since 1978 the presidents of the Basque Country Autonomous Region, under the provisions of the ‘Gernika Statute’ which gave a considerable measure of autonomy back to the Basques) are still sworn in to office here in the beautiful assembly buildings by the oak tree (which fortunately were not destroyed by Hitler´s bombs). (I'm afraid it was a rather dull day when I took the pictures and it was midwinter so the trees are not in leaf...)
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Whenever the oak tree looks like dying, a new one is planted next to it using an acorn from the existing tree. Currently, the remains of the previous oak are contained within a classical style canopy while a young oak is doing its ceremonial duty nearby.
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Inside the assembly buildings, there´s a lovely oval assembly chamber, and a ceremonial hall with a spectacular glass ceiling showing the sacred oak and the Basque people.
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The window was made by a distinguished 19the century Bilbao stained glass workshop whose windows can be seen in various places in Bilbao, too. Perhaps the most spectacular is the great window in the main Bilbao railway station, Abando, which depicts the Bilbao industrial revolution.
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Gernika´s sacred oak tree and its bond with the fueros – central symbols of Basque national identity – and its suffering at the hands of the Germans and the Spanish state during the Spanish civil war – make it a poignant and politically highly significant place.  The town itself, devastated by the bombing – and Franco went on to bomb many other Basque towns, though not as devastatingly as Gernika – has now been rebuilt, and is home to two fine museums – the Museum of the Basque Country, and a Peace Museum, which together tell the story of Basque identity, culture and conflict from the stone age to the Civil War, and on to ETA terrorism and contemporary Basque nationalism.
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And what of Picasso’s painting? Picasso’s role as an ambassador of peace and an anti-fascist activist – which came about partly through his natural political leanings and partly as a result of the iconic status of the Guernica painting – is something I’ve only recently learnt about, first through a great exhibition, ‘Picasso and Modern British Art’ which I saw in Edinburgh last year, and currently through an exceptionally interesting exhibition that´s on at the Guggenheim now, called ‘L’Art en Guerre: France 1938-1947 - from Picasso to Dubuffet.’ The painting itself is in Madrid, who won’t allow it to be moved to Guernica – yet another nail in the coffin of the tense relationship between Madrid and the Basque Country.
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Although Guernica has strong symbolic and ceremonial significance, it´s not, by the way, where Basque government happens. The Basque Parliament, and the residence of the Lehendakari, is in the beautiful city of Vitoria (Gasteiz in Basque) in the south of the Basque Country, which I’ll write about later, and Basque Government buildings are distributed through the three main cities of Bilbao, Vitoria and San Sebastian.
7 Comments
Barry Goldensohn
24/6/2014 05:53:40 am

Thank you for this useful information. I was born the hour Guernica was bombed--my birth sign.

APRIL 26, 2006

This is the day I reach 69,
the elegant union of head to tail, tail to head,
the lover’s number, the yin-yang sign,
a celebration of three, the mystic numbers
of the guide through the forbidden grove (now allowed)
to the freely disregarded former god
who was absent from any supervisory role
in the century in which I’ve lived most of my years
on an orderly, ritual-loving continent,
with well regulated trash collection,
public gardens, smooth lawns, milk
delivered at dawn in cold bottles, clinking and sweating--

screaming and glistening with blood
at the hour of my birth Guernica was carpet bombed
as practice for the time of saturation--
the horrified face through the window that sees
the broken bodies by the light of a bare bulb--
devastating cities thick with targets, human
and other items of civil life: school,
public sculpture in parks, music pavilion, musician,
library, literary life, the writer.

Reply
Val
26/4/2017 01:34:45 pm

What an amazing story told through your poem, Barry. Do you still live in Guernika?

Reply
best essay service link
31/12/2017 02:04:00 am

Up to this day, I still think the Adolf Hitler is the most evil person to have ever walked on Earth. I feel so bad for all the people who had to die just because of how insane he is. Imagine being burned alive just because of your race. I hope that he is in some place where he can experience what he did to all the Jews. The Jews did not deserve it and I hope all the victims' families will be able to move on from what happened even if it hurts a lot.

Kim
1/6/2015 08:08:24 pm

Thank you for this nice article! I just visited Basque Country in both France and Spain for the first time last month. Great to know more about the history. Very interesting and informative.

Reply
Melvin E Becraft link
14/7/2016 08:30:15 am

Great article.

Reply
Val
26/4/2017 01:32:44 pm

Hi, I just discovered your blog. I live in Australia and am writing a young adult novel which starts at the bombing of Guernika. I visited in 2016.

Reply
Clifford Thurlow link
14/11/2023 06:37:23 am

An excellent article I would like to see added to the comments section in my own blog on Guernica to extend backlinks and widen the knowledge of the bombing - https://cliffordthurlow.com/2022/04/03/the-bombing-of-guernica/

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