My wife, Eileen, and I visited the Guernica Peace Museum on International Peace Day – 21st September.
The museum commemorates the bombing of the town in the Spanish Civil War but also focuses on reconciliation after conflict in Spain and around the world.
Guernica (Gernika in Basque) is a small town in the Basque region of northern Spain. Despite its small size it is culturally significant to the Basque people as the site of their ancient, local assembly. In the Middle Ages, delegates from villages in the region met there to discuss the issues of the day beneath an old oak tree. Over time this tree came to symbolise the freedom of the Basque people.
For this reason, General Franco and his Nationalists (Fascists) forces in the Spanish Civil War chose Guernica as a target. Franco's aim was to undermine his opponents among the Basque nationalists and the elected government of Republican Spain in a brutal and violent manner. To do so he called on his Fascist allies in Nazi Germany and Italy to bomb the town. Aircraft from Germany's Condor Legion razed Guernica to the ground in a "blitskrieg" (lightning attack) in four hours on the afternoon of April 26th, 1937. This was a market day, and the town was crowded with people from the surrounding area. The number of deaths is still disputed, but official Basque figures report that 1,654 local people lost their lives in this attack. The aircraft did not bomb the railway station or a munitions factory, suggesting that the aim of the attack was to kill civilians and destroy property.
Picasso's iconic picture commemorates the attack.
Old Oak Tree of Guernica
The museum features photographs of the devastation of the town but for me the testimonies of the survivors had the greatest impact. A woman tells us how she, as a young girl, saw her mother being killed while running for cover. A man tells of his internal conflict when enrolling for compulsory military service in the army responsible for the death of his parents.
William Smallwood compiled the first testimonies. He was an American teacher, who learnt Basque from immigrants in Idaho, USA. Their stories inspired him to visit Guernica in the early 1970s where, under the pretence of revising a science textbook, he worked with the Basque underground to interview survivors of the bombing. Transcripts of 124 such interviews, mostly conducted by Smallwood in Basque at substantial risk to participants, were smuggled out of Franco's Spain. The Basque Government’s Institute of Memory, Coexistence and Human Rights compiled further testimonies in 2018.
The exhibition moves from harrowing accounts of death and destruction to attempts at peace building and reconciliation. Only after the return of democracy in 1975 could the victims tell their stories openly and attempts at reconciliation between the two sides in the Civil War begin. Though the war ended in 1939 its legacy still has an impact on modern Spain and on Basque identity.
The exhibition broadens its scope to also examine the effects of terrorism by Basque revolutionaries and how they gradually renounced violence for completely non-violent politics. The museum has exhibits on the Northern Ireland Peace Process and on the transition from apartheid to majority rule in South Africa. Its work drew the Australian/American artist William Kelly to Guernica where he set up a Peace & Art school.
On reflection, I found the testimonies of the bombing to be more engaging than the accounts of reconciliation. Perhaps horror is more compelling than the slow and painstaking process of peace building. It is certainly easier to describe! Writing this article has piqued my interest in Guernica and the museum’s work for peace. I would like to learn more. More broadly, what lessons can we learn from Guernica? Can we apply those lessons to other conflicts? If so, how? What role, if any, can Servas play?
By: Niall Watts, member of Servas Britain and Ireland