Guernica

April 27, 2007 at 6:38 am (Jim D, spain, war)

This Friday is the 70th anniversary of the destruction of the Basque town of Guernica by German bombers acting on behalf of the Francoist forces in the Spanish Civil War. Although it was not the first aerial attack on an undefended civilian town (the Italians had done it in Abyssinia; and in Spain German bombers had previously destroyed Durango), and although the scale of the casualties was subsequently eclipsed by what happened
in WW2, Guernica came to symbolise the brutality of modern aerial warfare. This is largely because of Picasso’s painting:

http://www.mala.bc.ca/~lanes/english/hemngway/picasso/guernica.htm