Bombing of Guernica

The bombing of Guernica took place on April 26, 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, which pitted the right-wing Nationalists against the left-wing Republicans.

Guernica is a city in northern Spain, a cultural region that houses the Basque people. The city kept to its own during the civil war but that didn't stop the Nationalists from conducting an experiment with its citizens: to see how much they could annihilate a town implementing the relatively new technology of air strikes. They also wanted to capture the neighboring city of Bilbao and debilitate the morale of the Basques. The Nationalists aligned with the Fascist governments of Germany and Italy to carry out the attack. Germany at this time was barred from having a military following the conditions of the treaty that ended World War I.

The bombing happened on a Monday, the traditional market day, which was used to maximize the number of innocent casualties. Several waves of planes carpeted the city with bombs, leaving somewhere between 300 and 1,500 people dead. Guernica was all but destroyed.

This incident was the inspiration for Pablo Picasso's painting Guernica that same year.