Guernica--40 Years Later

The bombers roared in low on a sunny afternoon. Unopposed by antiaircraft fire or fighter defenses, they pounded away for almost 3 1/2 hours, Heinkel-111s in the lead, followed by ponderous Junkers-52 trimotors. As fighter planes wove in and out, strafing people on the ground, the bombers unloaded some 100,000 lbs. of high-explosive, fragmentation and incendiary bombs on a small Basque town in the green hills of northern Spain. When the bombers left, a town had been smashed to rubble, but a symbol was born--still evoked for many by Pablo Picasso's best-known and most terrifying canvas.

The date was April 26, 1937, the place Guernica, spiritual home of the Basques and Basque nationalism, site of a revered oak tree under whose branches Basques had elected their representatives since the Middle Ages. The Spanish Civil War was in its ninth month, and troops of the provisional Basque government were fighting alongside Republican forces against Francisco Franco's Nationalists. The fragile front was about 15 miles from Guernica, a target of at best limited military value.

How Many Died? To this day, no one knows how many of Guernica's 7,000 inhabitants and about 3,000 refugees in the town died under the bombs and in the resulting fire storm: estimates have ranged from 200 to as many as 1,600. Nor does anyone have proof of who, ultimately, was responsible for a raid that was the prototype of World War IPs massive bombing campaigns. Within hours of the death of Guernica, the Nationalists charged that Basques themselves had set the town afire--a lie that would persist for much of Franco's reign.

This week the rebuilt town prepares to mark the 40th anniversary of the bombing with a memorial Mass, a photo exhibition and a gathering of historians. Madrid has stalled giving its approval to the ceremonies, in part because the Guernica controversy remains alive. Basques know that the Franco regime permitted a revisionist version of Civil War history: aircraft belonging to the Condor Legion, a Luftwaffe contingent supporting the Nationalists, had carried out the raid, but the Nationalist high command was not involved.

Former German air force officers have conceded that the Luftwaffe was responsible for Guernica; they have also insisted that the raid was a monumental error, caused by bad visibility and inexperience. The real target, they have claimed, was a tiny, 60-ft. stone-and-steel bridge over the narrow Mundaca River, a funnel for retreating Basque troops. But why incendiaries against a stone bridge? And why so massive a raid against so small a target? The Renteria Bridge, in any case, was never touched. Nor were the sacred oak and the adjoining Casa de Juntas (assembly hall) of the Basques, nor an important small-arms factory on the outskirts of town.

The bridge still spans the sluggish, greenish Mundaca, touching directly on the new Guernica that has replaced the flattened core of the old town, much of it laid out along original streets. The population has grown to some 17,000, reinforced by many non-Basque migrants from other parts of Spain. Unemployment is relatively low: the three silverware factories and the old arms plant are doing acceptable business. Monday --the day the bombs came--is still market day. Basque is spoken widely, and the old folks say that the young are more radical than anyone in their pursuit of Basque rights and Basque autonomy.

No one has forgotten the bombardment. "I have been aware of it since I was aware of anything," says a young businessman whose parents lived through the attack. "For years we were not allowed to talk about it. They gave us more football and more pelota [the game known in the U.S. as jai alai] and more toros [bulls], so we would forget it. But we haven't." In the Restaurante

Arrien, bombed out and rebuilt, the old men, many with Gudari (Basque republic soldier) emblems in their lapels, sit drinking tinto, playing cards and ruminating about Spain's first parliamentary elections in 41 years, to be held next June. They remain insistent that the truth must come forth about Guernica. "We need to get at the whole truth," says Pensioner Juan Aguirre, 61, "and we still don't have it."

Spiritual Center. No one is more outspoken on the subject than Joseba Elosegi, a former captain in the Basque army. His machine-gun company from the Saseta Battalion was recuperating in Guernica when the bombers came. "Guernica's significance does not lie in its stones," he says. "You can change those. What you cannot change is its legend, its face as a spiritual center for the Basques."

Elosegi lost 25 of his 100 or so men during the bombardment. He took pictures the next day in the smoke and the rubble, 48 hours before the Nationalists occupied the town. In 1970 he sneaked a mineral-water bottle filled with pure alcohol into the San Sebastian fronton, where Franco was attending an international jai alai tournament. Elosegi doused himself with alcohol, set it afire, and jumped into the arena from the second balcony, shouting, "Cora Euzkadi Askatuta!" (long live the free Basque country) and "Guernica, Guernica!"

"I wanted to bring the fire of Guernica to the one who had provoked it," he explains. "I wanted to give him a fiery abrazo." Elosegi missed his target and paid for his act with 17 days in a coma and 30 months in jail. One of the organizers of the anniversary remembrances, he is calmer today about the raid but no less committed. "Guernica was an obsession with me," he says. It is an obsession shared by hundreds of Guernica's inhabitants and countless other Spaniards as well.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.