The Spanish town where Franco let Hitler & Mussolini loose

First impressions of Guernica is that it appears, on the face of it, quite an unremarkable-looking town.

The compact pedestrian-friendly core is like dozens in Spain; neat and tidy and liberally sprinkled with colourful plants, cafes, bars, bakeries, banks, grocery stores and clothes shops.

But most Spanish towns don’t have a central square like Plaza de los Fueros.

On display here is a collection of large black-and-white photographs depicting the carnage wrought in Guernica on the afternoon of April 26, 1937.

It was almost a year into the Spanish Civil War and the Nationalists, led by Francisco Franco, allowed their fascist counterparts from Germany and Italy to test out their aerial military prowess on Guernica, a stronghold of the Republican movement and the historic capital of Bizkaia, or Biscay, a province of Spain’s Basque Country.

We’re in Guernica (or Gernika in Basque) on a side trip from Bizkaia’s largest city, Bilbao, a half-hour’s drive from here.

Tour guide Asier Perez talks us through the build-up, chaos and aftermath of that fateful day in 1937 when a near four-hour bombardment was carried out here by Hitler’s Condor Legion and Mussolini’s Aviazione Legionaria.

Overseeing the operation was Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen, a nazi who would later launch World War II “blitzkriegs” in Poland and France.

The devastation of Guernica was heightened by the fact that it was a Monday — market day, so busier than usual — and that many of the town’s buildings were made of wood.

Estimates vary as to the final death toll, but respected Basque historians believe that about 1600 people were killed and almost 900 injured, many seriously burned in the raging fires. Survivors managed to scramble to the bomb shelters that stud this town set in the valley of the River Oka inland from the Bay of Biscay.

Though the fascists tried to cover up the attack, journalists covering the Spanish Civil War — including Australian-born war correspondent Noel Monks — reported the news to shocked global audiences.

One appalled reader, living in Paris, was Spanish-born artist Pablo Picasso. He was already working on a commission by Spain’s democratic Republican government to create a mural for the impending World Expo in France’s capital.

However, the atrocity in Guernica, alongside other horrors committed in his homeland, drove him to conjure a new oil painting. While it had little short-term impact — Franco won the civil war in 1939, then ruled Spain as a dictator until his death in 1975 — “Guernica” became one of the most powerful anti-war paintings of all time. The original is housed at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, but there’s a full-size copy in Guernica.

Composed of tiles, it’s a few minutes’ walk from Plaza de los Fueros, which is overlooked by the town hall, one of Guernica’s numerous reconstructed buildings, and Museo de la Paz, a museum investigating the 1937 tragedy with audio-visual recreations and witness accounts.

If you’re coming to Guernica independently, you may also have time to visit the restored air-raid shelters and the Museo de Euskal Herria, a museum that reveals more about Basque culture, festivities and folklore.

We take in some important Basque sites on a hillside above the Guernica mural. One is the Gernikako Arbola (Tree of Guernica), where representatives of nearby feudal villages would have met in the Middle Ages before Guernica became the official seat of Bizkaia’s parliament.

Shrouded in a temple-like enclosure, the current tree was only planted in 2015, replacing one that had succumbed to disease, but an earlier oak had stood for over 450 years.

There’s a symbolic oak tree on Bizkaia’s heraldic arms and the premier of the province is still sworn in up here.

Ceremonies take place at the neoclassical Casa de Juntas (Assembly House), which survived the 1937 bombing, as did the neighbouring 15th-century Gothic-renaissance church of Santa Maria de Gernika.

An acorn’s throw away, oak and beech woodland shade the grass lawns of the Parque de los Pueblos de Europa (Park of the Peoples of Europe), where there’s another notable tree — a gingko from Hiroshima, the Japanese city that suffered its own wartime horrors in 1945.

Home to a couple of large-scale modern sculptures — by Basque artist Eduardo Chillida and Brit Henry Moore — this is a lovely and tranquil park.

Ambling around, I pass a burbling stream flowing into a pond, hear children laughing at a nearby school playground, while birds chirp all around (Guernica is located within the UNESCO-protected Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve).

Walking back through the town, where people are sipping coffees on sun-dappled terraces, I pause by the statue of Jose Maria Iparraguirre, the “Basque bard”, a 19th-century poet and musician whose soulful compositions include Gernikako Arbola (Tree Of Guernica).

A little further on is the market area, where a farmer’s market still pops up every Monday (9am to 1.30pm), when stalls are stocked with a bounty of regional produce. In my mind, prior to this visit, Guernica was a byword for terror and tragedy.

Viewing Picasso’s haunting painting in Madrid two decades ago had lingered with me; so had hearing My Guernica, the eerie 2001 tune by Welsh rock band the Manic Street Preachers, while Dave Boling’s 2008 historical fiction novel Guernica — An Epic Story Of Love, Family And War was a vivid and moving read.

I couldn’t help imagining Guernica as a bleak place, but I see it differently now.

fact file + Buses and trains connect Bilbao with Guernica — set in the Gernika-Lumo municipality — in about 50 minutes. For more information on Guernica and the Basque Country, see gernikainfo.eus and tourism.euskadi.eus + You can visit Guernica on guided Basque coast and countryside day trips from Bilbao. Itineraries also usually call it at Gaztelugatxe, a rocky hermitage islet that featured in Game Of Thrones. Expect to pay from about €69 ($123) per person. You can book via localexpertstours.com