Many Spaniards were outraged, while others were excited by the mention of the President of Ukraine about bombardment of Guernica in a speech in which he scolded us for not helping him enough in the face of the Russian invasion.
Why ask a foreign politician to know our history if we don’t know it ourselves… and when most of the outraged or enthusiastic would not know how to put Ukraine on the map until the war started?
Themes and stereotypes when judging about foreign nations are very common. Reading the opinions about Spain of the German National Socialist leadership causes laughter: Franco did not enter the war on the side of Germany because he was Jewish and it was controlled by the priests; let’s not say what the Slavs believed. Ignored in Britain Juan Sebastian Elcano up to the point that it was taught Francis Drake He was the first navigator to circumnavigate the world. Barack Obama He called the Umayyad Córdoba and Almanzor an example of tolerance. And I told my father to unsubscribe from Economist for if a magazine published in London illustrated information about Madrid and Barcelona with drawings of flamenco dancers and horsemen from Ronda, then how reliable was what it said about the Middle East or South America!
endless civil war
Unfortunately, the only episode of the Spanish Civil War known to the whole world, although minor episodeand just because it features a 20th century supervillain, Adolf Gitlerserved to show Spanish paleticism again.
There was a time, brilliant though not inclusive, when the Spaniards, as he wrote, Rafael Garcia Serrano, “they divided the world like a slice of melon, like cheese from their own sheep, like a family garden.” Since the 19th century, with rare exceptions, the Spaniards, although they travel a lot, live mentally locked in villages divided by quarrels, where everyone comes together to improve nothing, not even clean the streets.
The world is changing and history is returning. As one Italian (Italian!) General said, Claudius Gratiano, “there are two words that were no longer in our vocabulary, like Europeans, war and enemy, which continue to exist.” Europe is getting smaller, poorer, more dependent and older. And instead of worrying about our future surrounded by hostile nations, we discuss the past. To serve as a model for some illustrious professor, now known only for his novels and his pub stylewho, despite living in Brussels and knowing German, uses the controversy to return to pay off Franco Already Ricardo de la Cierva! Old men pierce the dead with a spear. How sad… and how creepy!
Let’s go back in time to find what for me is the best analysis of the controversy between Guernica and Ukraine, article by Julio Kamba 1935 titled “Italians and Ethiopians” and published ABC when this newspaper was not a backward echo of progressive slogans:
“All the military conflicts that break out in the world never interest the Spaniards, except to the extent that they may represent a tactical variation of our old and endless civil war. Sometimes we play Russians and Japanese, others Unionophiles and Germanophiles, and now, even if nothing happens in Abyssinia, now we will play with the Ethiopians and Italians.
And they want to replace this columnist genius with Manuel Chavez Nogaleswho to me is nothing more than a journalist with a flat and boring style.
What happened in Guernica?
In conclusion, let us make a few brief remarks about bombardment of Guernica.
- This was not the first shelling of civilians.. In the summer of 1936, the Popular Front government used its aircraft and navy to bombard numerous cities from Huesca to Larache and from Ceuta to Oviedo. In addition, Guernica was not an open city, but rather a military facility.
- On March 31, 1937, Italian aircraft bombed Durango, killing about 250 people. massacre of unarmed prisoners in Bilbao prisons (many of them not related to conspiracy or war) committed on January 4, reached 224.
- body count in Guernica this is unknown because neither the Basque government nor the university has compiled a list. The ones we know of, compiled by General Jesus Salas Larrasabal and a local association, place the dead between 120 and 160, a far cry from the over 1,600 that the Basque government decided on in 1937, and which many historians continue to consider reliable. Others claim that the number is incalculable and will never be known.
- The attack on Guernica was given on his own orders. German Command of the Condor Legionally of the citizens, promote the offensive and take Bilbao.
- British press, especially correspondent George Steer from Timeused bombardment to encourage rearmament against Germanywhich was opposed, in particular, by the Laborites. The same press ignored the bombing of Durango because it was meant to separate Italy from Germany.
- Guernica became a myth because of the refusal of the national side to acknowledge responsibility for the bombing and the subsequent Picasso campaign.
And what’s the use of remembering the above when Algeria is going to raise the price of natural gas … to what the socialists got us?
How I would like to ask the commentators, who have gone from specialists in vaccines and epidemics to experts in military strategy and psychology of Vladimir Putin, with which countries Algeria borders.