From Guernica to Gaza
Echoes of bombs and brutality in today’s Northern Spain
Barcelona in May and the air is cool as I make my late night pilgrimage to Bar Marsella. Many of the unopened bottles lining the bar walls predate even the names whose long ago patronage made the place famous. To get here, I walked the portion of Las Ramblas where Eric Blair, better known as George Orwell, fought a civil war within a civil war, defending the left wing Marxist POUM headquarters against Stalinist hardliners trying to cement control over a fractious Barcelona. One cannot help but feel swept up in history in surroundings such as these, especially when sipping absinthe at the very bar frequented by Dali, Hemingway, and Picasso.
Perhaps it is this connection to history which allows the Catalans of Barcelona such a clear-eyed perspective on more modern events. Walking the labyrinthine alleys of the Gothic Quarter I was struck by how many Palestinian flags I saw draped from terrace railings. I couldn’t go from one block to another without encountering pro-Palestinian graffiti or posters. In fact, I found this to be true to the entire Northern swath of Spain in which I traveled, from Catalonia to Aragon to Euskadi. Obviously there is some connecting thread, or suture, stitching the scars of these places to the bleeding wound in Gaza.
The Spanish Civil War, spanning from 1936 to 1939, was more than a clash between Nationalists and Republicans; it was a bloody rehearsal for the horrors that would soon engulf the world. Spain became a sandbox for fascist ambitions. Adolf Hitler’s Germany and Benito Mussolini’s Italy used the conflict to test their military capabilities against a hodgepodge of Republican forces and left-wing militias backed by the USSR. On the order of Franco, German planes flattened cities that held no military advantage, dropping incendiary bombs on civilian populations. Famously, carpet bombing the city of Guernica on April 26th 1937 which represented the first European city to be decimated from the air.
However, it wasn’t the new war fighting technology or even the Nazi’s that Republican Spain feared most. Franco’s regular army exercised a campaign of terror where torture and rape were routinely used as weapons.
Yet, Franco and the upper echelons of the Catholic Church vigorously denied the mass killings and bombings. When the word “Garnika” was found on the April 26 diary entry of a German pilot shot down by the Basques, Franco absurdly claimed it was likely to be the name of the pilot’s girlfriend in Hamburg. The Nationalist propaganda machine insisted that Guernica had been razed by retreating Republican troops. These denials were readily accepted by the British and the Americans, both content to let fascism flourish in Spain.
Franco ultimately won his war, outliving both his Italian and German benefactors by declaring Spain “neutral” during WWII. When the rest of Europe was finally able to do away with their fascists, it was not so for Spain. He ruled as a dictator king until his death on November 20th 1975.
Germany and Italy had provided the bulk of Franco’s weaponry. The US had refused to sell arms to either side of the conflict. However, a few years after the war, the undersecretary of the Spanish foreign ministry told a journalist, “Without American petroleum and American trucks and American credits, we could never have won the civil war.”
So maybe a Catalan is a little quicker to scoff when the IDF claims Palestinians are blowing up their own hospitals. Or when religious leaders run cover for torture and rapes committed by the “world’s most moral army.” Perhaps there is a residual sting upon seeing a German, Italian, or an American Flag printed on munitions destined for schools in Gaza. I’d guess someone from Zaragoza or San Sebastian might draw a direct line from the weapons tested upon them 86 years ago to the new AI powered killer drones being unleashed on civilians in Rafah. Albert Camus’s words still ring with truth: “Men of my generation have had Spain in our hearts, It was there that they learned … that one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit and that there are times when courage is not rewarded.”
Before the Spanish Civil War was lost, fascism had already triumphed in Europe. By showing their willingness to not only coexist with the fascists but to also do business with them, all while ignoring a terrifying litany of heinous acts and barbarism, the “Great Democracies” of the world gave Franco and his allies a green light for continued aggression. While the leaders of Britain, France, and America couldn’t see Franco for the menace he was, many of their citizens did. Some of those brave men and women enlisted to help fight in the International Brigade for a free Spain. However, their bravery was spent on a doomed cause and even upon return to their homelands they were viewed with suspicion and derision by their own governments.
The fall of Spain served as a klaxon, a loud warning of greater horrors to come, and I fear Gaza is ringing even louder. This time, America isn’t merely fueling a sadistic regime. We arming and fighting along side of one. If today we are comfortable with genocide, what atrocity won’t we assist in tomorrow? That is a future at least as dark as what was on the horizon in 1939.
Spain endured the longest fascist dictatorship in history. They know the signs and shapes more keenly than most and when they point their finger we all should follow their gaze.