The Day Germany and Italy Bombed Spain: A Retrospective on One Battle in The Spanish Civil War

April 26, 1937, was market day in Guernica, a holy city of the Basques, when, at the behest of General Franco who was fighting the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War, warplanes from Germany and Italy dropped bombs on Guernica and fighter planes machine-gunned civilians.  Guernica was a not a military target.  The bombing and strafing run lasted for over three hours.  

Euzkadi was the autonomous Basque region straddling northern Spain and southern France.  This autonomous Basque republic had been granted wartime self-rule by the Spanish Republic in 1936, when the Republic was fighting against Franco’s fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War.  Euzkadi, which had its own language and customs, held out for nine months before Bilbao in the region fell to Franco in June of 1937, and the Basque army surrendered in August of 1937. About 7,000 Basques had been killed in the fighting, 6,000 were later executed by Franco, and 45,000 were imprisoned. Approximately 150,000 went into exile for decades.  Franco subsequently tried to eliminate the Basque language (known as Euskera) and customs.

The bombing of Guernica in April 1937 was not the first time that civilians had been bombed in wartime.  In WWI, over one thousand British civilians had been killed in German air raids.  Japan bombed Shanghai in 1932, killing hundreds of civilians.  The British journalist G.L. Steer was The London Times’ war correspondent in the Basque region.  He came from Bilbao within hours to write an eyewitness report of the aftermath of the bombing.  His report appeared in both The London Times and The New York Times.  His account was the best account of the bombing, and described how the bombing had no military objective other than to destroy the “cradle of the Basque race.” 

History records that at least two hundred and perhaps more were killed in Guernica with more wounded.  After the war ended, Franco tried to rewrite history by putting the blame for the destruction on arsonists in the Basque army. The fire brigade attempting to put out fires after the bombing was unable to do so because the water mains had been damaged.   This contributed to much fire damage.  The bombing shocked the non-fascist Western European nations, a few of which took in Basque refugees during and shortly after the Civil War.  

Due in part to Steer’s reporting, the bombing of Guernica, though not the first time civilians had been bombed in wartime, evidenced the vulnerability of civilian populations in wartime and tragically marked the modern threat of total war as fascism took root in Europe and those fascist regimes built up their machinery for war.  Guernica has since become a symbol of resistance to oppression, and still remains an important symbol and city for the Basques.