Gernika

spain

5 panoramas by iñaki rezola

Guernica was almost completely destroyed in the afternoon of April the 26th 1937. The nazi planes – helped by a few italian ones – started the bombing at about 16:30 hours (local time), and it lasted for about four hours. At that moment Guernica was crammed with people. It was market day, so a lot of the inhabitants from the surrounding villages had come. Nobody knows exactly how many people were there. And nobody knows how many people died. Some by the bombs, some by fire, and others shot from the low flying planes that harassed the desperate ones who tried to leave the town. Everybody here lost someone that day. Some lost them all. The smoke the subsequent fires raised stopped the operationt as it became impossible to distinguish any particular target. And Guernica burned until the next day. The rehearsal had been played. There was more to come.

The main target was reportedly a bridge but there were also armament factories in Guernica at the time. And above all was the enormous symbolic value of the town: Guernica represented the Basque Country, and general Franco would fight fiercely anything he suspected opposite to the ‘Sacred Unity of Spain’. Even the Basque language was forbidden after he won the war. Ironically enough, both the bridge and the tree with its surrounding houses of parliament were spared, as the smoke hid them.

Guernica had to be completely reconstructed. ‘There is no old town center in Guernica anymore, like in any other place around’ told me sadly me a woman in a bar where Picasso’s ‘Guernica’s reproduction hanged most apparently from a wall. The reconstruction, though, had to be made in fear as stating anything about the bombing was declared a crime. The official truth had it that the Basques themselves had fired their biggest symbol in order to descredit Franco’s partisans. The truth was only known at home, and the parents would advise their children never to talk about it to anybody outside, as a pair of women reported me when I was shooting the Cemetery’s Bombing Victims’s Memorial. Outside Spain, journalist George Steer spread the news. Gernika is still grateful to him. What is done is done, and no one will change that, but Truth heals.

April the 26^th remains a day of mourning in Guernica. The survivors were able to remember everything as if it had happened the day before. They would tell in all detail where they were, what they were doing, who they were with during all the time the bombing lasted. And they would remember it, year after year. No, April the 26th was not – and still is not – an easy day here. Although only two survivors are left alive nowadays, nobody has forgotten, and nobody wants to. They all want to remember. Not for revenge, though. Guernica has become a City of Peace and hosts a Peace Museum. Truth heals.

 

On Every April 26^th this Memorial to the Victims of the Bombing in the cemetery of Guernica gets covered with flowers. Not only from local people, but from all around the world. Because when the wounds a people suffers from overpass the suffering any people can bear, the whole of Humankind is aching.

Gernika Cemetery, Memorial to the Bombing Victims

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The V International PEACE MUSEUM CONFERENCE is being held these days in Gernika (May 1 through 6th 2005). On Sunday May the first an opening ceremony by artist William Kelly took place in the Foru Square, where Gernika’s Peace Museum is located. The ceremony was simple, yet of high emotional intensity. Hollow silhouettes of various kinds of people where placed in the arches that surround the square, each one of them having its shadow-candle-made-silhouette. After a short explanatory text by William Kelly was read (in Spanish, Basque and English), the participants in the conference were asked to light a little candle in a central big torch and spread all over the square to light the candle-shadowed silhouettes (which is the moment this pano shows). During all this time a musical background was played. After that all the lights were turned out so the square was just candle-lit.

Gernika, ‘Foru’ Square during Bill Kelly’s Peace Ceremony, 2005-05-01
© William Kelly, Gernika Peace Museum Foundation, Gernika Gogoratuz Foundation & Culture House of Gernika, Gernika-Lumo Town Council. Reproduction prohibited.

Gernika, ‘Foru’ Square during Bill Kelly’s Peace Ceremony, 2005-05-01

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This unpretentious little stone slab is the memorial to the bombing victims. It has a cubic form and the hollow in the center is reminiscent of the traditional tombstones in the basque cemeteries. It would be easy to walk aside it without noticing it. That’s what makes it most touching to me: real pain doesn’t like showing off. It is a deep hollow, an empty inside, the absence-presence that those that are gone forever have left in us.

Gernika, Tombstone memorial for the bombardement victims

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This is the memorial to the ‘Gernika battalion’ who fought the nazis at Ponte de Grave on 1945 April 14. The place it stands on was spared during the bombing, along with the nearby oak tree, reportedly because of the smoke that covered them. The old church of Santa María, to the right, stood up too, though it was seriously damaged.

Gernika’s Battalion Memorial

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‘Guernica’ to Gernika, says the Basque writing below. Though it is not the kind of picture one might put there just for decorative purposes the painting by Picasso is everywhere to be seen here: it is apparent in particular’s households, official buildings, bars and restaurants, façades… It punches to the stomach, reopens wounds, causes pain. And at the same time it is what best symbolizes what the Guernicans will not to forget.
This panorama shows a real size ceramic reproduction of the picture, and an old claim of all the Guernicans: they want ‘Guernica’ here. Because they feel that it is of their own. Like their pain.

‘Guernica’, Gernikara

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© 2005 Iñaki Rezola

Related websites

Guernica at wikipedia