Cold Open

It’s April 26th, 1937, on a road in northeast Spain.

It’s a warm day, and Australian journalist Noel Monks is thankful for the fresh air rushing into the car from the countryside. Noel is a correspondent for the London Daily Express and he’s come to Spain to cover the country’s Civil War, which has been raging for almost a year. Today, Noel is on his way to the front lines to report on the fortunes of the Spanish Republican forces struggling to keep their country together against the rebelling Nationalists. Noel’s driver, Anton, occasionally has to swerve the car around craters pockmarking the road - evidence of the fighting nearby.

Soon, the road takes them through the small town of Guernica, which is busy today with farmers and merchants from the surrounding area setting up shop in the town square. Officially, the town has canceled its Monday market because of the Civil War in the country, but the locals are still eager to sell their wares. So, as Noel and Anton take the road out of town, they drive past wagons full of fresh produce and shepherds with their flocks of sheep heading toward the central plaza.

Noel and Anton drive about 18 miles east of Guernica when suddenly Anton jams on the brakes.

He points to the sky, and Noel’s heart leaps as he looks up to see six fighter planes. Noel and Anton know immediately they’re not friendly - they’re German planes on loan to the Spanish Nationalists from the Nazi Air Force. Noel and Anton watch with horror as the planes bank and turn in the air… to come back for them.

Noel and Anton jump out of their car and duck for cover in a muddy crater. The planes roar overhead, firing their machine guns while the two men press themselves into the dirt as deep as they can. The planes make a few passes, firing again and again, before finally moving on. Noel and Anton are unhurt but deeply shaken. This is the closest to combat Noel has ever been.

And as he watches the planes fly away, Noel notices the six fighters aren’t the only aircraft in the sky. They seem to be escorting twelve larger, slower planes, flying higher in the air. Those are bombers and they’re heading toward where Noel and Anton just came from - the busy town of Guernica.

The subsequent bombing of the town of Guernica will spark outrage across the world. Many will regard it as a war crime. Others will rightly fear that it is simply a sign of things to come, a new era in modern warfare that will begin when the civilian population of a small Spanish town is deliberately targeted for destruction on April 26th, 1937.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is April 26th, 1937: The Bombing of Guernica.

Act One

It’s dawn on July 18th, 1936, on the Canary Islands, off the North coast of Africa, nine months before the bombing of Guernica.

In a dimly lit room on a military base, 43-year-old Spanish General Francisco Franco sits surrounded by his advisors. Franco may not look like much - he’s a small man, with a pot belly and a squeaky voice but he’s still one of the most powerful figures in the Spanish army.

The room he's in is acting as a communication center, and the hum and crackle of radio broadcasts puncture the tense silence between the men. Franco and the others listen intently. A military coup is about to begin in mainland Spain.

Spain is a Republic with a recently elected government led by an alliance of left-wing parties, including the Spanish Communists. But the country is in a state of disarray, with an economic recession, rising unemployment, and widespread labor strikes. Tensions have grown between different religions and ethnic groups, and political assassinations have only made things worse. General Franco, and other military men like him, hate Communism and want Spain to return to its past as a traditional Catholic country. So, they have been plotting to overthrow the democratically elected government.

As General Franco listens to the radio broadcasts from the mainland, it’s clear that the coup d’etat is well underway. Rebel troops have seized control of barracks and military bases all across Spain.

And that afternoon, General Franco boards a plane that flies him from the Canary Islands to a Spanish colonial base in Morocco in North Africa. This base is home to some of the best troops in the Spanish army, and the majority of these soldiers have joined the rebellion against the government. But after disembarking from the plane, Franco is told that a small group at the base has refused to back the coup. Among them is General Franco’s own cousin, a Major in the Spanish Air Force. But after only a moment’s hesitation, Franco orders the resisting officers to be executed. 189 men are killed, including Franco’s cousin.

With this resistance crushed, General Franco has secured the base in Morocco and the loyalty of the 30,000 soldiers there. But news from the mainland is mixed. Only around half the military has defected. Much of the Spanish Navy has remained loyal to the democratic government, which still has control of most of the country, including all its major cities.

So, what was intended to be a swift coup is about to become a bitter civil war. Spain is split between two warring factions: the right-wing rebel Nationalists, and the Republicans, who support the democratically elected Spanish government.

And soon, General Franco and his elite troops are airlifted from Morocco to join the fight on the battlefields of Spain. The Nationalists have strongholds in the south and west of the country, but they soon begin to advance beyond those. They lay siege to the Spanish capital of Madrid and push the Republican forces back.

As the fighting continues, General Franco emerges as the leader of the rebel Nationalists. And By spring 1937, his troops are closing in on the Basque Country. A region in the north of Spain with its own history, traditions, and language, different from the rest of the country. It’s exactly the kind of regional independence that General Franco and other Nationalists are against - they want all of Spain to share one unified set of ideals and culture.

General Franco hopes to end the fighting in the north quickly by taking control of the regional capital of Bilbao. The Nationalist campaign is aided by supplies, weapons, and fighters from foreign allies, and chief among these is Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler sees the rebel Spanish Nationalists as his political bedfellows. And he thinks the war in Spain is the perfect training ground for German troops to prepare for Hitler’s own future conquests. So, Hitler loans Franco his best planes and pilots, who fight for the Nationalists in a unit they call the Condor Legion.

One of the Condor Legion’s commanders is a former World War One fighter ace named Wolfram von Richthofen. It is Von Richthofen who identifies a weak spot in the Spanish Republican defenses in the Basque Country - the Errenteria Bridge, just outside the small town of Guernica. Von Richtofen plans a bombing raid to destroy the bridge, as well as a nearby artillery factory and several barracks housing Republican troops.

But there’s no way the Germans can hit just these targets. Their planes don’t have the capabilities for such a pinpoint attack. The only way to destroy the bridge and the barracks will be to carpet bomb the entire town. But that won’t put off Von Richtofen or General Franco. So, the pilots of the Condor Legion will take to the skies, knowing that their bombs will fall mostly on innocent civilians, ordinary people whose lives will soon be engulfed in the inferno of war.   

Act Two

It’s late afternoon on April 26th, 1937, in Guernica, nine months after the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

45-year-old bartender Juan Silliaco is walking toward the market when church bells start echoing through the busy streets. Juan thinks that’s odd for this time on a Monday – but then, over the ringing bells, Juan hears the angry buzz of an airplane engine. He knows that the Republican forces don’t have an Air Force to speak of anymore. So, it must be a Nationalist plane. Juan realizes that the church bells aren’t calling local people to Mass - they’re warning them to take cover. Immediately, Juan starts running in the direction of Guernica’s one fire station.

Because although Juan is a bartender, he’s also a leader of the Guernica fire brigade.

He is just hurrying across the town square toward the fire station when there’s a tremendous burst of flame and smoke. Juan is knocked off his feet before he knows what’s happening. In shock, he doesn’t even notice that his arms and legs are covered with splinters – wooden shrapnel from a nearby building that was just destroyed. Juan staggers blindly in the dust, tripping over what he discovers is the body of a woman, torn apart by the blast.

Wiping the dirt from his eyes, Juan follows the sound of screams to what used to be the Julian Hotel, a four-story building that has been reduced to rubble. Bewildered woman claw at the wreckage, shouting that their children are buried underneath. Juan tells the woman to stop screaming, then places his ear up against the rubble listening carefully. But he doesn’t hear any sign of life. He looks back at the woman, his face pale. They begin to scream once again.

More planes soon roar overhead, dropping bombs throughout the town. There are two kinds of payload - high explosives that knock down buildings, and incendiary bombs designed to start fires. These burn white-hot magnesium and aluminum to temperatures of more than 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. And one of these bombs hits a pen of livestock, spraying two bulls with burning metal. The enraged and terrified animals run wildly through the smoke-filled streets, trailing flames from their burning hides.

Stumbling further Juan finds a few other volunteer firefighters in the chaos, and together they run toward the fire station. They’re about fifty yards away when the building disappears in a cloud of smoke, flattened by a collapsing house next door. The town’s sole fire truck is now under a ton of concrete rubble. And Juan realizes with horror that there is no way to put out the fires that are now engulfing the town. So, he tells the other firefighters to split up and help the citizens in whatever way they can.

But there’s not much the men can do. The people of Guernica are defenseless. Some who find shelter in buildings that aren’t bombed still succumb to smoke inhalation. Another group of 15 teenage boys hides in a cement viaduct that carries water to the town, but it collapses under the onslaught of the German bombers, burying the boys alive.

Some survivors do manage to escape the town altogether, fleeing via the Errenteria Bridge to the north, the same bridge that was one of the official targets of the bombing mission, along with the artillery factory and barracks. But when the raid is finally over, 90 minutes after it began, all of these military targets are left standing. Instead, the bombing has destroyed Guernica’s town hall, the market square, the fire station, and countless homes and businesses. Hundreds are dead and many more are injured.

Two days later, the story of the bombing of Guernica appears on the front page of the New York Times. The brutality of the attack on defenseless civilians shocks the world. And in response to the outrage, General Franco’s Nationalists claim the bombs were meant for military targets but missed because of foggy weather. But the skies in northeast Spain that day were clear. The Condor Legion didn’t hit the town by accident - they just didn’t care about civilian casualties.

The Spanish Nationalists will continue to downplay the event for years to come. But they won’t be able to erase the destruction of Guernica from history, nor will they be able to stop the tragedy being immortalized by one of the most famous artists of the 20th century.

Act Three

It’s April 30th, 1937 in Paris, France, four days after the bombing of Guernica.

Pablo Picasso sits in his attic studio, feeling heartbroken for his homeland of Spain. He reads the French newspaper Ce Soir, which has just published the first photographs of the smoldering ruins of Guernica. Picasso is horrified by the loss of life - but with his outrage also comes inspiration.

For the last few months, Picasso has been unsuccessfully trying to find an idea for a mural he’s been hired to paint for the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris. But now he believes he’s found the perfect subject.

The day after seeing the photographs in the newspaper, Picasso takes pencil to paper and begins to sketch a mural inspired by the horrors of Guernica. Two months later, in July 1937, his work is done, and Picasso’s painting is revealed to the public. Simply titled Guernica, the vast oil painting is a black-and-white jumble of abstract figures, twisted in agony. There’s a fallen soldier beneath a dying horse. A wide-eyed bull. A grieving mother holding her dead child. Guernica is quickly hailed as a masterpiece, and the painting focuses worldwide attention on the ongoing conflict in Spain.

Although the bombing of the town of Guernica continues to draw widespread condemnation, it is still a military victory for the Spanish Nationalists. With Guernica in ruins, its people are preoccupied with searching for survivors trapped beneath the rubble. So, it's not difficult for the Nationalists to take control of the town - and push beyond it. A few months later in June 1937, they capture the Basque capital city of Bilbao and by the end of the same year, the Nationalists control all of northern Spain. Two years later, the war is over. And the victorious General Franco becomes dictator of Spain, staying in power until his death almost forty years later.

But the bombing of Guernica will never be forgotten. It will come to be seen as just the first in a long and bloody series of civilian terror bombings. In World War Two, London, Dresden, Hiroshima, and many others were targeted for destruction. And to this day, whenever civilian areas are bombed – by any country, for any reason – it is an echo of the turning point in the history of modern warfare, when the town of Guernica in Spain was bombed on April 26th, 1937.

Outro

Next on History Daily. April 29th, 1996. The new musical Rent premieres on Broadway, only a few months after the death of the show’s creator.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Gabriel Gould.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Jack O’Brien.

Edited by Dorian Merina.

Managing producer Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.