" Remembering Gernika /Gernika Remembers"

Nine months into the Spanish Civil War, on 26 April 1937, the Basque town of Gernika was the target of a large aerial bombing campaign carried out on behalf of Generals Emilio Mola and Francisco Franco by the German and Italian air forces. Over 75% of the town's built structures were entirely destroyed in the attack. In this video CRIC researchers Dr Dacia Viejo-Rose and Fiachra McDonagh explain how that attack quickly became imbued with symbolic meaning that turned it into a 'memory event'. They discuss the censorship that existed in Spain during the Franco period that prevented public commemorations of the event, how the anniversaries were marked by the Basque government in exile, and how from 1976 memory of the event began to be marked in Gernika.
This video introduces some of the ideas explored in a forthcoming book chapter by Dr Dacia Viejo-Rose and Fiachra McDonagh entitled: "Memorial Markers: Commemorating the bombing of Gernika"**
With thanks to:
The Gernika Gogoratuz Peace Research Centre and Gernikazarra Historia Taldea
For further information on CRIC Spain case studies: Mourning and Memory, go to:
www.cric.arch.c...
For CRIC's youtube film, "Reconstructing Spain":
• Reconstructing Spain
See also the CRIC RESEARCH PROJECT VIMEO CHANNEL, including a presentation on the continuing reconstruction of DRESDEN after the Allied bombing of 1945 and the city's troubled anniversary events at:
vimeo.com/33733958
Credits:
Animation: Prosper Unger-Hamilton
© Film CRIC research project.
The CRIC Research project is funded by the European Commission within the Seventh Framework Programme

[@kthornbladh]

I had several friends growing up in America who were the children of Basque Anti-Fascist Refugees. Every one told me the Basque Army was armed with single-shot, hunting rifles. Even so, the Fascists couldn't break their lines and that was why the Germans proposed terror bombing to the Nationalist generals. For my own edification I would like an answer.