On November 28, the king Felipe VI accompanied the president of the Federal Republic of Germany to Guernica.
There, the latter apologized for the role of his country, then governed by the Nazi dictatorship, in the infamous bombing of April 26, 1937.
As usually happens on these types of occasions in which a representation of the Spanish State (apart from the permanent one, let us not forget, personified by the Lehendakari) goes to the Basque Country, the local nationalists took the opportunity to say things that were very emotional for them, but that do not hold up from a historical point of view.
It should not be surprising that EH Bildu said through the mouth of the deputy Oskar Matute that the king, the Popular Party and Vox, who did not attend, are “the heirs of those responsible for the bombing of Gernika and before them there is no room for equidistance or whitewashing.” Bildu always cries with only one eye; the other is usually empty.
Nor is it surprising that Admit Estebanpresident of the PNV, as past leaders of the party have done on other occasions, has taken advantage of the moment to declare that the Spanish State and Felipe VI must have “the same gesture of asking for forgiveness” as Germany for the attack.
Not even that the lehendakari Imanol Pradales shortly afterwards he insisted on the same thing in an article (A democratic demand) published in elDiario.es, where he also said that “the people of Gernika […] represents the Basque people.”
Is it safe?
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, accompanied by King Felipe VI, during a wreath laying in memory of the victims of the bombing in Gernika, this Friday.
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It is true that Guernica, as the town was called then (please see the documentaries of the time), was attacked not because it was a military objective, but because of its symbolic value as the seat of Basque “liberties”, but also because it was in republican territory and they wanted to terrorize the civilian population.
That is to say, it was bombed by foreign planes (the Italians lent a hand) at the service of the Spanish rebels against the legitimate Government of the Spanish State.
Those same planes largely left Basque territory controlled by the troops commanded by the generals who wanted to destroy, and in the end succeeded, Spanish democracy; That’s why they didn’t drop bombs on the rebels Vitoria and Pamplona.
Who supported the rebels and fought with them?
Well, among others, in the first case, Basque and Navarrese masses enthusiastic about the new Crusade and, in the second, tens of thousands of Basques and Navarrese from all the provinces included, and this must be noted, as volunteers, especially in the Carlist thirds.
They fought against them in the first months of the war, before the later glorified nationalist battalions of gudaris emerged, especially leftist Basque militiamen, who were often none other than the reviled layouts or immigrants, whose presence so bothered a doubtful PNV.
But the Carlists were not alone in their fight against the Godless Republic, since we must not forget that the very Catholic PNV supported the rebellion in Álava and Navarra.
And weren’t there also Falangist Basques? Well yes, so many that they were very Basque hands (Juan Tellería, Pedro Mourlane y Jacinto Miquelarena) those that years before made up a good part of the Face to the Sun.
In short, although it is difficult to make numbers, since there is a trap in the account, it is likely that more members of the Basque people, whatever that may be, fought against the Republic voluntarily (those recruited are not counted here) than in its favor.
And even the latter is in some ways questionable, variable and reversible.
“During the Civil War, Basque nationalist leaders approached the democratic powers (and even the Nazis) with offers to break with the Republic in exchange for guarantees of independence”
As is well known, when the last strongholds of the Basque Country fell, on August 24, 1937, representatives of the PNV signed the so-called Santoña Pact with the Italian high command, by which that party withdrew its twenty thousand gudaris from the war in exchange for special treatment.
Franco vetoed the agreement and shot the leaders and alleged “criminals” he could catch (three quarters of the soldiers who surrendered ended up in punishment battalions, released and/or integrated into the rebel army; the rest were imprisoned).
But, meanwhile, the abandonment of the lines by these troops produced a serious deterioration of the Republican defenses on the Northern Front, preventing a more orderly withdrawal.
The Republic considered Santoña’s surrender a betrayal. It wouldn’t be the last.
Both during the Civil War and during the Second World War, Basque (and Catalan) nationalist leaders approached the democratic powers (and even the Nazis) with offers to break with the Republic in exchange for guarantees of independence.
The freedoms of the rest of the Spaniards, with whom they did not identify, mattered little to them..
During the Franco regime and after, many descendants of Carlists and Peneuvists joined the ranks and leadership positions of the nationalist parties and, unfortunately, ETA.
Perhaps the most notable case is that of the not-at-all-missable Xavier Arzalluzan expert in collecting nuts from trees that others shook with shots to the back of the head.
Among his many xenophobic and deceitful pearls, one stands out, released when the painting Guernica of Pablo Picassoa commission paid for with money from the Republic, that is, from the reviled Spanish State, returned to Spain at the end of 1981 and was exhibited in Madrid.
Then this man said that “Euskadi takes the bombs, and Madrid takes the art.”
It was a surprising statement from a former priest who forgot the evangelical mandate to honor his father, FelipeCarlist volunteer in our battle in Civil War.
He also remembered that thousands of his insurgent ancestors (those who left a bloody trail in their wake from Álava to the Guadarrama mountain range) did not take the country’s capital by the skin of their teeth at the end of July 1936, but instead they immediately showered it with shells with great taste and profusion.
That is, Madrid took the bombs (many more than Bilbao, San Sebastián Vitoria, Pamplona and Guernica combined) for the longest time, almost three years.
And so we return to the events of last November 28. With Basque nationalists of all stripes continuing with the rather hackneyed game of the bad Spaniard and executioner against the good Basque and victim.
Counting, like the pirates of the song Joan Manuel Serrata story that is not.
They deceive themselves and try to deceive the rest with hypothetical pardons as complex as they would necessarily have to be contradictory, from many people and in many directions.
That is why the king did well not to speak at the Guernica ceremony. What could he, or anyone, say in the face of so much ignorant or self-interested confusion?
Who was there willing to hear that the Spanish Civil War was not against the Basque Country and its “people”, but also in the Basque Country and among Basques?
And finally, why wouldn’t the king also have to apologize for other terrible episodes such as the bombings and their thousands of deaths in Madrid, for the bombs that killed 157 Jaén residents on April 1, 1937, the attack by the Nazi fleet in Almería on May 31, 1937, or the very deadly Italian air attacks on Barcelona in March 1938 that left almost a thousand victims?
But forgiveness to whom, in whose name and, above all, for what?
*** Antonio Cazorla Sánchez is professor of contemporary European history at Trent University (Canada) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.