It was the mid afternoon of a warm and bright Monday in a beautiful Spanish city called Guernica; Suddenly a menacing roar, as if from the clouds, came from some part of the sky, scared away the pigeons that drank water from the fountain of a square.
Then the men and women tried to look up, but did not have time to express their amazement. A turbulent wave of German aircraft, heinkel, dornier, and yonker, flew overhead, unloading tons of deadly bombs.
They were the most powerful aircraft of the time. They were the most powerful bombs of their time. And that brutal demonstration of irrational power was made against a population that did not have antiaircraft defenses.
But there was something more brutal: they were German planes bombing a Spanish population that was not in conflict with them.
The Spanish people were in conflict with fascism; that brutal and genocidal horde that I wanted to submit to Spain, and that in the end it succeeded. To achieve this, Francisco Franco gave carte blanche to the Nazis to test their weapons of war against the rebellious Basque people.
In that way Hitler and Franco won. Hitler tested his weapons and Franco massacred his people.
During 4 hours the Nazi bombers called by Franco, made low flights in a radius of 10 kilometers machine gunning to the defenseless fugitives.
In the end, in practice, Guernica was erased from the map. But the memory of the people should not erase this event, so that it never happens again: and that is why we remember it today, because it happened on April 26, 1937.
