The bombing of Guernica:75th anniversary.

On April 26, 1937, German planes belonging to the Condor Legion, under Franco's orders, bombed Guernica, practically reducing it to rubble. Today marks 75 years of that. But why has the destruction of the small Basque city, of little or no military interest, become one of the milestones of the Spanish civil war? There are several answers.
First of all, it is a very controversial fact due to the different interpretations it has given rise to. The destruction of a city without military objectives existing in it was a new and difficult fact to present to public opinion. For this reason, the most right-wing historians tended first to deny it and then to present it as an unwanted "collateral effect". The denial of the fact provoked the mobilization of anti-fascist historians who presented it as a sign of the brutality of fascism. The controversy increased the emblematic role of Guernica.
Secondly, most historians agree that this bombing preluded the tactic of massive bombing of cities that, soon after, would be widely applied in World War II. In this way, it was possible to increase the terror of the enemy civilian populations and, with it, achieve the demoralization of the opposing side. This new tactic was also used in other places in Spain during the Civil War, both by the Francoist troops (Barcelona, ​​Madrid, Alicante, Durango,...) and by the Republicans (Zaragoza, Oviedo, Cabra,...) although never with the same purpose of total destruction. On occasions, it was even the errors of the observers who guided the bombing, as in the case of Cabra.
Thirdly, the fame of the event was boosted by the repercussion that Picasso's painting had on the subject, which ended up becoming the same pictorial representation of the horror caused by the bombardment, thus being associated the name of the Basque town with one of the world allegories of the infamy of the war.
For these reasons Guernica has become in the symbolic representation of the Spanish Civil War. His memory remains so that we do not forget the pain inflicted, the desperation and the injustice that every armed conflict entails.
The following article by Jacinto Antón, published in EL PAÍS on April 22 of this year, analyzes, in a synthetic way , the various existing interpretations of the bombing and points out a basic bibliography on this event. The three hours of the Condorhttp://www.scribd.com/embeds/91411469/content?start_page=1&view_mode=list&access_key=key-2d8vlx1sf1bibodcbnm9