The Basque cultural legacy is complex. On one hand, it is a deeply nationalist culture that has preserved an ancient language and sense of identity; on the other, because of its prosperity, its openness to France and to the sea, it has long been a most cosmopolitan society. It is no mistake that the playful new museum made to house the best of international art was designed by an outsider, or that the wonderful new bridge in Bilbao was designed by Santiago Calatrava, also an outsider.
Novelist and broadcaster, Colm TóibÃn, writes in The Guardian, here, on the history of Guernica, Picasso’s abstract portrayal of the savage bombing of the Basque town in 1937.
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I feel compelled to give my opinion here, as a Spaniard that I am.
The bombing of Guernica was abherrant. The excesses of Franco’s regime and his alliance with the Nazis and Fascists are a black chapter of the history of Spain - not only of the Basques. We, democratic Spanish, mourn those innocents killed by the German planes and will keep accusing on our history books those responsible and guilty for the carnage.
I therefore consider Picasso’s masterwork a reflection of what Spain was at a time and the particular holocaust many Spaniards suffered under Franco, and it is my opinion that the Guernica painting is not an exclusive property of a Spanish region, it is the property of the whole Spanish nation, a shout to denounce cowardice that must be well clear in the consciences of all the Spanish people. If it is hung in Bilbao or in Madrid to me it is quite the same because I consider the Basque country an unsplittable part of Spain.
By the way the article in the Guardian is excellent and does not mention Picasso’s predilection as to the place where the painting should be shown permanently. He just said Spain.
An excellent contribution Jose, very welcome.
I don’t know much about Franco’s Spain, I probably know more about Philip II, and the collapse of the empire, and that was almost 500-years ago!!
It always amazes me that that Franco died only a few decades ago. I have never visited mainland Spain, although I have visited the Canary (Gran Canaria) and Balearic (Ibiza) Islands on holiday. I’d like to visit Barcelona, Madrid, Cordoba, and Bilbao for starters, but I am a travel-junky!
I promise to devote a little time to reading up on Franco, and the Spanish civil war.
The best history of Spain has been written by British historians. Paul Preston is one of them.
You studied Philip II because he was the idiot that sent the Armada to its catastrophic end LOL.
This site may be useful to you.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0006863736/203-4836651-4505555
I read up on Philip II because I was looking for people to compare to Bush!
The human being has never changed, Tyger, never. LOL, the same idiocy and arrogance.