Before Mariupol, before Gaza, before Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Dresden and the Blitz, there was Guernica. The little Basque town in northern Spain was once the byword for state cruelty following the 1937 bombing of Guernica during Spain’s civil war\u2014an unprecedented air attack on a populated city that shocked the global conscience and inspired Pablo Picasso’s most famous work,\u00a0Guernica<\/em>.<\/p>\n

An atrocity is a weird thing for a place to be famous for, but neither tourists nor locals seem very fazed.\u00a0Guernica<\/em>, the painting, is such an abstract depiction of civilian suffering that visitors have no problem posing in front of it. Guernica, the town, is a center of Basque culture. For Basques (who know it as Gernika), the violence that moved Picasso nearly a century ago is merely one chapter in a long history of resilience in their quest for freedom.<\/p>\n

Predating the Roman Empire and even the Celtic civilization before it, people along the Bay of Biscay have spoken Basque, a language with no known living relatives. Empires have risen and fallen, but Basque Country has preserved its unique culture and laws. From medieval times onward, Spanish monarchs would swear to uphold Basque traditions under a sacred tree in Guernica.<\/p>\n

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“It is a republic; and one of the privileges [Basques] have most insisted on, is not to have a king,”\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0American Founder John Adams in 1786. “Another was, that every new lord, at his accession, should come into the country \u2028in person, with one of his legs bare, and take an oath to preserve the privileges of the lordship.”<\/p>\n

More than a century of Spanish revolutions and crackdowns gradually eroded Basque autonomy. Then, in July 1936, the pro-fascist Gen. Francisco Franco launched a mutiny against the Third Spanish Republic. In a bid for Basque support, the besieged Republicans quickly restored self-government to the region. By April 1937, Guernica was the last pro-Republican community standing between Franco’s forces and the major city of Bilbao. With German and Italian air support, Franco moved to take the town.<\/p>\n

“Guernica, the most ancient town of the Basques and the centre of their cultural tradition, was completely destroyed yesterday afternoon by insurgent air raiders,”\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0British war correspondent George Steer a day after the first wave of bombers struck. “In the form of its execution and the scale of the destruction it wrought, no less than in the selection of its objective, the raid on Guernica is unparalleled in military history.”<\/p>\n

“Guernica was not a military objective,” Steer continued. “The object of the bombardment was seemingly the demoralization of the civil population and the destruction of the cradle of the Basque race.” <\/p>\n

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