Nearly nine decades after Luftwaffe pilots contributed to the most notorious atrocity of the Spanish Civil War, Germany’s president visited the Basque town of Guernica to commemorate victims of the Nazi-led bombing and stress that the “horrific acts” perpetrated there must always be remembered.
On April 26, 1937, hundreds of civilians perished and many more were wounded when German Condor Legion aircraft, aided by planes from fascist Italy, carried out prolonged attacks on Guernica during a busy market day. Adolf Hitler had deployed the Luftwaffe unit to support Gen Francisco Franco’s nationalist forces during their uprising against the republican government, while also enabling Nazi pilots to test blitzkrieg strategies later used in World War II.
Guernica’s devastation, which set a precedent for civilian air assaults, was memorialized by Pablo Picasso in his monumental monochromatic painting named after the town.
On Friday, Frank-Walter Steinmeier became the first German head of state to visit Guernica, where he and Spain’s King Felipe VI attended a memorial event at a local cemetery and placed a wreath honoring victims. The leaders later toured Guernica’s Museum of Peace, meeting survivors Crucita Etxabe and María del Carmen Aguirre.
During a recent state visit to Spain, Steinmeier addressed the bombing and its enduring impact. “Germans were responsible for horrific acts in Guernica,” he stated at a Madrid gathering on Wednesday. “The Condor Legion’s attack destroyed the city and claimed hundreds of defenseless lives in horrific, agonizing ways. The suffering echoes across generations of Basque families.”
After viewing Picasso’s *Guernica* at Madrid’s Reina Sofía museum, Steinmeier noted the artwork’s message against indifference to conflict “remains critically relevant.” He emphasized, “We must never forget these crimes committed by Germans. Guernica stands as a warning—urging us to defend peace, freedom, and human rights. This duty persists.”
His remarks follow an acknowledgment decades prior by former German president Roman Herzog, who admitted Germany’s culpability in the attack.
Guernica’s mayor, José María Gorroño, celebrated the visit as “historic” and reiterated longstanding appeals for Picasso’s masterpiece to be relocated from the Reina Sofía to its namesake town. Speaking on Spanish radio, Gorroño argued Spain owed a “moral debt to the bombing’s victims” and declared, “Guernica belongs in Guernica.”
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