The Day Guernica Died

On March 28, 1975, four bombs rocked the ancient town of Guernica in northern Spain. It was not the first time, nor the last, that such incidents had occurred, and it provoked a not untypical reaction by the Franco regime. Next day, thousands of Spanish Civil Guards armed with machine guns virtually sealed off Guernica from the rest of the country. Basque Nationalists had set off the bombs to commemorate an event that had occurred thirty-eight years earlier. This is the story of that event—and hopefully an explanation of why, even now, efforts are being made to distort what happened in Guernica on April 26, 1937, that has made it symbolize the horrors of war to millions of people, inspired Pablo Picasso to immortalize it in his most famous painting, and placed it apart in the annals of warfare.