In Our Time - Picasso's Guernica

Episode Date: November 2, 2017

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the context and impact of Pablo Picasso's iconic work, created soon after the bombing on 26th April 1937 that obliterated much of the Basque town of Guernica, and its people. The attack was carried out by warplanes of the German Condor Legion, joined by the Italian air force, on behalf of Franco's Nationalists. At first the Nationalists denied responsibility, blaming their opponents for creating the destruction themselves for propaganda purposes, but the accounts of journalists such as George Steer, and the prominence of Picasso's work, kept the events of that day under close scrutiny. Picasso's painting has gone on to become a symbol warning against the devastation of war.With Mary Vincent Professor of Modern European History at the University of SheffieldGijs van Hensbergen Historian of Spanish Art and Fellow of the LSE Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies andDacia Viejo Rose Lecturer in Heritage in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge Fellow of Selwyn CollegeProducer: Simon Tillotson.

This is the BBC. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the programmes. Hello, in 1937, Pablo Picasso revealed his painting Gernica at the Paris International's exhibition in the Pavilion of Republican Spain. The work took its name from the Basque Town,

which just a few months earlier had been carpet bombed and burnt to rock. by Nazi Germany planes, supporting Franco's nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. The outcry over that massacre was so great that the nationalists denied responsibility, saying the Basques did it themselves. But eyewitness reports in Picasso's painting ensured this infamous act of terror would be remembered and around the world Picasso's Gurneker has since become one of the most iconic protests against the horrors of war. Women to discuss Picasso's Gurneker are Mary Vincent, Professor of Modern European History at the University of Sheffield,

Geis van Hensbergen, historian of Spanish art and fellow at the LSE, Cagnada Blanche Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies, and Dacier-Bieto Rose, lecturer in heritage in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. Mary Vincent, what divided Spain at that time and brought it into war? The immediate cause of the Spanish Civil War is a military coup, which takes place on the 17th and 18th of July 1936, so nearly a year before the bombing of Guernica. And the reason for the military coup reflects the fact that a large section of the right, particularly vested interests like the army,

large sections of the church, and many of the middle and upper classes remain unreconsiled to the Republic. The Republic being left wing. The Republic being left wing. The popular front governments elected in February 1936, which is pretty much the signal to elements of the intransigent right to start plotting.

There is, though, in my mind, opinion, a failure of governance on the part of the Republic as well. By the time you get to 1936, the Republic is extremely fragile. From February, for example, it's governed by a very small number of Republican parties. And even though the socialists and other major left-wing groups have taken part in the elections, they don't actually participate in government. Why is that? They don't want to or they aren't invited. They don't want to. They are invited. Large sections of the Socialist Party, particularly the main union. which provides the popular support for the Republic

are disenchanted with a liberal republicanism. They want more radical solutions and they feel that being part of a bourgeois government would compromise their position. So the socialist party is split. There are significant reformist elements that do want to take part in the government, but the actual trade union movement doesn't.

Didn't the socially see the consequence and what they did? The possible consequences? Some of them certainly did. The parliamentary leaders like Indolecio Prieto, they definitely see the dangers and the consequences of this. But the leader of the trade union,

Largo Caballero, is again much more intransigent. So from February 36, the Republic has a weak government which finds it very difficult to institute its political will and the right is plotting openly. And Franco emerges as a man who leads the nationalist forces.

He does. How did he emerge? And why did he emerge? Franco emerged through a combination of great ambition and quite a lot of good fortune. His most significant power ploy, if you like, is the fact that he is commander of the Army of Africa, who are the only battle-hardened troops in the Spanish army.

So he leads these experienced colonial troops who have been stationed in Morocco and then fight their way up from the South of Spain. He was a Gibraltar and then go up. They are airlifted across the Straits of Gibraltar by Nazi and Italian planes. So from the very beginning, the Francoist war effort is dependent on foreign intervention. But Franco's Biscent, the Army of Africa, gives him an advantage. And he has the extraordinary struggle, good fortune,

and that two of his main rivals die in plane crashes. Suspect plane crashes or proper plane crashes? It's probably proper plane crashes, but it's, there is, as you can imagine. Speculation and conspiracy theories run rife. It was extremely convenient. Was he a good general? Was he a good commander? No. He won, but was he good? No. In military terms, certainly so far as I understand it,

what he did have was a sense of political possibility and ambition, a desire to get to the top, and a complete ruthlessness in eliminating opposition, both in terms of the Republican population in conquered territory and in terms of potential rivals. So that's begun. Sorry. You're finished. Sorry.

So that's begun. Guys van Hensberg. Where was Picasso when War broke out? And what was his status as an artist? Picasso was living in Paris. And he had already been in Paris for, gosh, more than 30 years. And his relationship to Spain had been distant. But he had gone there for the last time,

and it would be the last time ever, in the summer of 1934, to go, to see, apparently, to see the bullfights. While there, he actually encountered the politics right up in front of him. He was invited, and it could only be possible in Spain, but he was invited to a fascist gastronomic society called Gu in San Sebastian. It was the last time in a sense that the left and the right and in the intellectuals could be sitting in the same room. After the meeting, he goes out for dinner with his wife and his child Paolo,

and who comes turning up to him but the head of the phalanche José Antonio Prima de Rivera who apparently tells him that he are going to give him an exhibition and previously in the Republic it would be very, very difficult to secure the exhibition but they would give him a military guard for the exhibition. And Picasso then, in the end he moves on, shocked because Prima de Rivera says he the last time he made,

someone with eyes like his was Mussolini. And Picasso goes back, flees back to Paris, and in a sense watches from the bylines. Was it known at the time that Picasso was a communist? No, and he still wasn't a communist. That would only happen in 1944. But he went to Spain briefly and went... And he didn't like what he saw, except for the bullfight one presumes.

Yeah, he didn't like what he saw. And equally, the way that had been twisted, the kind of fake news element, where Jimenez Cavalieri, the speechwriter for Franco, had actually said that they had won Picasso for the right wing. And he felt embarrassed by that. And more and more, as the civil war starts, of course, the exiles come to Paris and he has a Spanish community.

How political was Picasso? It sounds a bit naive if he goes up to Spain to watch a bullfight, that's one thing, then goes to a fascist dinner party. That's another thing. Was it politically naive or did he not know what he was doing? Well, that's the same, isn't it, really? Well, he did know what he was doing. I mean, Carnweiler, his dealer, said,

he was the most apolitical man he'd ever met. I'm not sure, I think, what's happened now recently, with a lot of Spanish historians working on it, that they've discovered Picasso very, very quickly during the Spanish Civil War becomes highly political. In fact, so much so that in September, 1936, he's made the honorary director of the Prado Museum, which means, in a sense, they're using his status now

as the world's most famous artist to bolster the Republican, the Republican kind of propaganda side of the war. And as I understand it, he starts lampooning Franco. When does he do that? How does he do it? Well, at the beginning of January, 1937, a group of Republicans come up to him from the government. There's the big exhibition going to come in 37. And they say to Pablo, please, will you help with a huge kind of commission, a large painting?

and apparently he's supposed to have said, well, you know, I don't do politics. And they said, well, you've already accepted your position as the director of the Prado. That's a clear statement of support. And we really need you. I mean, even people have said that a painting from you is the equivalent of an army regiment. And he thinks about it. He accepts the commission, but he still doesn't know what he's going to do. But before that, he'd made some caricatures of Frango.

That's what I'm trying to get out. What were they? Can you tell us briefly about that? On that day. On that day, right. After the meeting, he sits down and in, I mean, at lightning speed, he does a series of caricatures, a strip of nine things, a dream and lie of Franco, in which Franco appears as this giant phallus, striding across the Straits of Gibraltar on a tightrope, and then desecrating, first of all, the classical sculpture.

Then he's a holy woman who's praying not to the host, but, to the five peseta piece, the Dura, and he becomes this kind of pig-like figure and disemboweling animals, and it's absolutely savage satire. So we know where past Picasso's dance then. Absolutely. So that's okay.

Dacia Vieto Rose. Why did the nationalist target Gernica in the Basque country? Tell us a bit about Gernica. Right. So that's the million-dollar question, in a sense. And in the same way as in Picasso's painting, you have a woman shedding light on the sea, historians have been trying to shed light on the scene of what happened in Guernica ever since the bombing. There are lots of theories. I think the truth probably lies at a combination of all of these theories.

So if you look at the Italian military diaries at the time because, of course, there were Italian planes involved in the bombing. The reasons they give is that it's strategic, that there are troops, the Basque Republican troops, are retreating towards Bilbao. Gernica is on the way. There's this bridge called the Bridge of Renteria, which is, they need to bomb to stop the troops coming over. And if you look at the bombings of the Italian planes, they bombed just before the bridge, they bombed just after the bridge, but one of the reasons that this theory collapses slightly

is that they actually missed the bridge. This isn't a large bridge, and they missed it. So either they were slightly incompetent, or that wasn't the aim. So in every theory there are questions. With the involvement of the Condor Legion on the part of the German Air Force, You have in Colonel Rischofen's diary on the night after the bombing of Garnika.

He writes in his diary, Greenica, seat of Spask Civil Liberties, home of the symbolic tree and meeting house was bombed and annihilated today. And yet, the tree and the meeting house were not bombed. So the real force behind it, I'm suggesting, if I'm wrong, you'll tell me, and we can get on with the program. The real force behind it was the German... the German Air Force. They masterminded

the back by Goering, who said he wanted that place, burned to the ground, Blitzkrieked. He said, it is said he said, as a birthday present to Hitler. And there's a promise of the future. This is what the Luftwaffe could do. This is what they were going to do

if they were let loose. Now, it said also that they targeted Gernica, this small town, but very pretty, because it was the right size, it was totally undefended. They did it at 4.30. on a market day when it would be very, very full, men, women, children, animals and that sort of thing,

they started bombing at four, then hit them at 4.30. So you lend credence to that, and then after they bombed it and set up a firestorm in the middle, they went back with machine guns and killed anybody who's running for the hills. Is all that accurate? Yes. Right. All of that is accurate. Okay.

Can you tell us what you thought was behind that? Was I correct in saying it was a demonstration of German firepower from the air? Yeah, so the larger theory behind it is that, The Germans were using Spain in particular as a training ground and to experiment what later would become their strategy for aerial bombing of civilian towns and unprotected towns in the Second World War. So this was a testing ground and they were practicing

and seeing also how the destruction of a town like that that was undefended, full of civilian, symbolic, would have the impact that would have on the morale of the Basques and of the enemy in continuing to fight or give up. I've described a little of what happened to the town. Can you take it for what happened to the fabric of the town after that bombing? So as you mentioned, it was a Monday, it was a market day. So the normal population of Gornika was about 5,000,

but that would have been inflated that day because of the market, because of all the troops that were around. There was a military hospital there. So at 4.30, and there are some different ideas about whether the bombing actually started at 3, 3.30, 4.30, but the documents seemed to indicate, as you said, that it was at 4.30. The church bells of the church of Santa Maria begin to, ring as they always did to warn the population that the planes were coming. So 430, the church bells begin to ring. People start to run for the shelters that had been done after the March 31st bombing

of Durango, a Basque town nearby. So they had started to build shelters. They start to run for the shelters. The first planes are the Italian planes, which are bombing along the bridge and the railroad. And then the German planes come in and they're big breakers. So they start breaking down the buildings. And then the next wave are the incendiary bombs that come in and set everything on fire. And as people are, of course, running to the shelters, the shelters begin collapsing on them. And then the machine gunning starts that as people are running up into the mountains, the machine gunning starts. And the anecdotes of those that were there who were children, of course, who were eight, nine, ten,

11 years old, they talk about seeing the faces of the pilots in the planes as they're machine gunning them and of running to hide in the monte in the hills just around. and Guernica under trees and in sort of little caves and sheltering there. And the Luftwaffe came in very systematically. They bombed the fire engine station so they couldn't get there. They bombed the water so they couldn't get water to the fires. And they bombed the shelters so the people in the shelters had gone there to hide were actually crushed to death. So it was a very total blitzkrieg.

Mary Vincent, how did this stormy to reach the outside world? How and when? It reached the outside world relatively quickly. unlike the bombing of Durango, which as Desi has said, that took place a few days beforehand. A small town nearby. A small town nearby. Very similar, I'm afraid, yes.

A very similar case. But Gurneker is quite nibble-bow, because of the bombing of Durango, people are expecting there to be something else. As soon as there is news, and any people see the planes and they see the smoke, journalists in particular set off to reach the town. The witnesses, apart from the town's folks,

are not in the town at the time of the bombing, but they get there very quickly. Two very significant witnesses are George Stier, who's the South African correspondent for the Times of London. He arrives very quickly indeed. And a priest, a man

called Alberto Orain Dia also goes in to, and they are both going, George Stier is going both to report to investigate, and he's going to actually find out what's happening. Stier's report is fantastically influential. Very detailed, interviews people,

there are photographs of companies, rings around the world. It's a great piece, a massive piece of war reporting. Can you just give us a little more? You went to the New York Times straight away after the London Times and so on. Yes, Stier broke the story and of course the Times repeats it immediately, but the initial news report is, as was common in the time of the day, because it's print columns, it's very factual, it's very short, that Steyer's very influential reporting comes out later in the weekly press

and then indeed in the book he writes the tree of Goernica, it's then taken up. It's taken up first in the French press and then it's taken up in the North American press. Just to clarify this tree of Goernica for the listeners. Basque towns had symbolic trees from the Middle Ages, the one in Goent who was a great oak tree where laws and things were passed and it. And it was not bombed and it was very important. Guys, let's try to keep the parallel at the moment.

how can you just let's try to describe the image that Picasso painted when asked to paint an image of Gernica which he did in about seven weeks can you describe the image we have it seven seven meters tall three meters away we have these small representations in front of us but away you go well first of all it's an extraordinary achievement

to fill a canvas of seven metres by three and a half seven meters long mural scale it's astonishingly powerful and what we see on the right-hand side is a house which is in flames three women, one screaming coming out of the top window holding a torch into the middle a woman with her hands up

and a woman who is on the bottom of the painting pushing in towards the central scene and the central scene is the real horrific scene which is a horse which has got a lance penetrating through from back to front down below it there's a soldier or a figure which actually in previous versions was a Picasso's self-portrait

but of a soldier with his head chopped off and arm locked off as well and on the left-hand side possibly the most terrifying in terms of our kind of human sympathies there's a bull which looks impassively onto the whole scene and below there's a woman holding a child and we as viewers already know that that child is dead and the mother is screaming up to the sky with this kind of terrible dagger-like tongue,

screaming for intervention and hoping that her child is still alive. And it's this all done in black and white and all the shades between Grizzai. And the... It's amazing, isn't it? But we need to say that, that's obvious. The bull is both implacable Spain

and imperishable Spain, isn't it? It's two things. It's Spain that lasts for Aberra. And it's also terrible, wreaking, terrible destruction. And it's a big feature, It's a big feature, but I think it's quietness, it's stillness. I mean, Picasso never wanted us to kind of close down the image and think of it in terms of, you know, that this represents Spain or this represents Franco or the violence. I think it's also actually a standing for the artist himself, the bull, which of course is a symbol for Catalans, particularly of the symbol of St. Luke, which was in fact the opposition art school to Picasso.

The artist standing in there, looking in on the scene below. So it's a kind of... Picasso always brings himself into paintings. Briefly, and was I right, when this was shown first to the people of Gernica, they didn't like it. They wanted a sort of photo-realistic painting of their city that was raised at the ground, 90-odd percent of property gone. They didn't really appreciate, or want, appreciates the wrong word.

They didn't like what they saw. Well, some of the... One of two did, but most of them didn't. Yeah, some of the politicians found it, kind of... of actually totally bizarre. Fingers, cartoon-like, stubby fingers, the kind of simplicity in a sense, but also the total confusion.

It is a chaotic image. It's deliberately chaotic because that's what it's trying to depict is the horror of Blitzkrieg, the horror of every kind of standard ritual in Spanish life is turned on its tail. I mean, there's no horse in a bullfight that's ever been stabbed through, but here in the painting

you can write the narrative as you want and Picasso has twisted everything around and made this very passionate statement but just to nail that little one there's quite a lot of people in Gernica said what has this got to do with what happened to us not making a big point but it's a point worth making because later the people of Gernica became

extraordinarily proud of it and built it into the town and built it into their lives Dacia in the months after the bombing when it got round especially Steers' journalism. It's a brilliant piece of journalism. The nationalists got the wind up. In fact, they got the wind up as soon as it appeared in the Times, and they started to tell a series of very wounding, total lies, which still persist, I'm told, today. Now, can you tell us what those

lies were and how they got away with them? Yeah, so the cover-up on the part of the nationalist side began immediately after the bombing. And you have Franco in particular first denying any involvement of the Air Force in it, and then claiming that any in a telegram that he writes to Spirgel, in the German head of the command of the military writing saying, well, if our planes were involved, it was just to destroy the strategic points of the arms factory, which again was not destroyed. But actually the reason for this was strategic,

So don't bring in any kind of observers to see what happened. So trying to cover up. And then he said that the Basques themselves set fire to the town. And it was that narrative that became the predominant one on the part of the nationalist and also the one that hurt the Basque even more. So this is a double injury to them. The first they destroy their most symbolic and sacred site. And then they claimed that they themselves, the Basques set fire on it and burned it to the ground.

How did they get away with it? partly because the nationalist troops come in three days after the bombing, so very quickly after the bombing. German military is brought in to cleanse the area of any evidence of their participation. They can't cleanse them much. The place has been raised to the ground, so what's the cleansing? So what's left of the bombs and of the writing on the bombs that mark where the bombs were made.

And what the nationalist troops do is they set up petrol tanks in various places as evidence that the Basques use these petrol tanks to set fire to the town. So there's this placement of evidence and this false news and post-truthness that comes in immediately after the bombing. Is there any way of gauging a percentage

of how many people in Guernica believed this and how many went along with it because they thought they'd be shot if they didn't? I mean, what was the reaction? Oh goodness, in Guernica itself, nobody believed it. They'd all seen what had happened. But the nationalists are also very clever

and the Bolin, the head of the Francois propaganda and media, brings in journalists that are favorable of the Francoist cause once the evidence has been planted and takes them around showing them the evidence seeing sea, look, this is evidence that the Basques set fire to their own town. And some of them, because they want to believe it, write up that version of events. Mary Vincent, can we go back to the painting again,

which has given us a very good survey of? Can you talk about it more? It gets painted, it's not likely immediately, but quite soon after it. And you take it to history from then on. One of the very, very interesting things about the paper, which is magnificent, is because it is painted in black and white

and all the shades in between. And of course, because Picasso is in Paris and, as this guy says, been in Paris for a long time, because he hasn't seen the war. He hasn't had any direct experience of the war. Picasso's actual view or experience of the war is through newsprint, it's through photojournalism, which is all over Spain. Spain's the first media war, and it's through reportage. And though the early sketches for the picture

are in colour, when he eventually paints it and paints it directly onto the canvas, he works in black and white, and that is extraordinarily effective because you do get that sense of reportage of newsreel, which is so intrinsic to the whole story of Gerneker. You know, Gurneker is both an atrocity, and it's a news story. And steer, in particular is very keen to work with both the very widespread fear of war from the air. The fear of aerial bombardment is acute in the 1930s. It's a bit like the fear of nuclear war in the 1950s. People are really scared of this new technology.

And also Stier is absolutely clear that one of his purposes is to show that there was Nazi involvement is to show the danger of German rearmament. Stier's reports, I would say one of the great reporting, Anyway, it's a wonderful... I agree. But is there clear evidence that Picasso saw these pictures in the papers of what had happened alongside Stiers' writing? And did he take his black and white from that?

He, yes, he couldn't have avoided the pictures. It is perhaps they're worth saying that apart from the title, there is nothing that fits the picture directly to Gernica or Gernica, because of course Madrid has been bombed. I mean both artillery bombardment and aerial bombardment. Barcelona will be bombed, Malaga will be bombed. So even though we think of Garnika or Hispanists, think of Durango as being the first bombing of civilians,

it's not, actually. It has happened before. But this is the first time it happens to a market town rather than a major centre of population. I mean, I think what's fascinating is we always talk about it being black and white and grizzai and all the shades in between. and that's what Grizzai is. But when it was first brought to Spain in 1981, the restorer, Jose Maria Cabrera,

analyzed the painting under the microscope. And Picasso had actually prepared it going right back to medieval techniques where you have a white-led ground, you then have a little bit of charcoal, graphite mixed in with the neck, so it becomes like a mirror. And over that...

You're rushing me. And why does it become like a mirror? So first of all... Sorry, I'm going to have to ask you to go slowly. Yeah. Right, there you go. I'm not good at this, but here we go. So he paints this entire canvas white to start with. Absolutely.

And does he sprinkle stuff on it? He mixes in with one of the lead white primers. He mixes in crushed glass. So it's white with crushed glass, so that gives it a shrunge texture. Well, a wonderful texture. I don't know. You tell me. Yeah, not only a wonderful texture.

What it does is it light comes into the picture and it bounces back out. So when we talk about the relationship between the painting and newsprint, it's also almost as if he's got a really. relationship between early television, the idea of light emanating out of a painting. And it always has a very highly keyed up feeling to it. It's very powerful. It's very luminous. And that's not just because of that light bouncing out, but because there are very subtle colour changes. Every day, it's got a very subtle little brown or a purple or... But then over the white, black comes in. And then over the white. The black comes in. Not everywhere. Not everywhere. And in

In fact, what's fascinating is that that painting that we see is actually a skin under which there are eight different variations which Picasso had worked on, which his lover than Dora Ma took photographs of. And there is one incredible day when, in fact, he thinks, am I going to try and add colour to this? It happens that Henry Moore is there in the studio. Anthony Penrose is there in the studio as well. They're looking at the painting.

And one of his friends Bergamim says to him, my goodness, Picasso, you're the man who invented cubism and collage. Why don't you, instead of painting it, which is irreversible, just stick bits of coloured wallpaper and see if it works. And of course, it didn't work. And thank goodness, in a sense that that experiment, which was just for a few minutes, and we have a photograph of it, fails, and we get the painting that we have today,

because it is actually through the black and white in this very highly luminous surface that we get the power and the magic and the aura. And then they came and, because he had only seven weeks to it, they wanted it for the exhibition, they came and said, is it finished? She said, no, but take it away. If I finished it, it'll be dead.

Absolutely. All finished paintings are dead paintings. I like that. Now then, Mary, no, Dacia, who was supporting, Franco? We have this propaganda exercise, which they must have thought was successful, did they? But who else in Spain was supporting?

He was gathering strength up to Gernico, wasn't he? Well, Gernico is quite a tricky thing for Franco to deal with and for the Francois side to deal with because one of the big factions in the north that was supporting Franco were the Reketez, this northern legion, which comes from the Carlist Wars, which were supporting him, and for whom Gernica was also a very spiritual, symbolic, important place. So one of the reasons for that cover-up was to quell the anger of the Riquetés

for having destroyed Greenica. And in Spain, as you know, the Spanish Catholic Church very much was behind Franco throughout, but in the Basque country, the Basque Church split. So you had part of the Basque Church and its priests

and within the Basque Church supporting the Basque and the sort of nationalists. So these were Christian Democrats in a sense, but also very much nationalist and behind the Basque cause. And then you had those that were supporting the Francoist and especially the Requettes

and the church that was behind the Riquete. So you had the split of the Basque Church, some against Franco, some for Franco, which then led to the execution of at least 16 Basque priests by the nationalists. But the heft of the Roman Catholic Church was behind Franco.

Yes, absolutely, all the way. And the Pope continued to support Franco throughout the war and throughout the dictatorship. Mary Vincent, governments around the world source tears report. I keep coming back to that. report, it seems to have been so very important. And they saw

it was going on, and then they saw Picasso's painting, which has been very vivid described as by Geis. They didn't have been, except surreptitiously, like the Germans and the Italians who went up the coast and again bombed a lot of undefended people. Why not? That's a very

good question. The general response, the international response to the Spanish Civil War is what's called non-intervention, which begins as soon as August 1936. so before when it's being clear that a military clue has failed that there will be a civil war. And non-intervention, which is ostensibly to prevent other powers intervening in Spain at all, actually isn't that.

It simply isn't that. Non-intervention, which is proposed by the French and the British government, actually turns into almost a policing mechanism, which does two things. It both ensures that no. well, that there will be a limit to the amount of intervention that there is in Spain because it has to be done in some sense surreptitiously the Mussolina's intervention is really very, very substantial. And so is Goerings. And so was Goer. Well, the number of Germans that are in Spain is not particularly large,

but what they are is extremely effective, whereas Mussolene's hundreds of thousands of troops. But the other thing that non-intervention does is it also, it does simply confine civil war to the Iberian Peninsula. It confines revolution to the Spanish, really to Spain. And that's the other purpose of non-intervention that it will limit

aid to the Republic, to both sides and the Spanish of the war, but it will skew it so that the Republic is disadvantaged and the Republic is disadvantaged from non-intervention from right from the very beginning. And extraordinarily it is not even interrupted

by Guernican. The non-intervention, Committee just doesn't discuss it. It does not, even though there is the outrage and even though there is the press report and even though there is confusion of denial and counter denial, the non-intervention committee simply ignores it.

They just continue with the policy that's been established in August 1936. Guys, Picasso's painting is a bit of a bump down in Ghani, but it is rapturously received. Can you tell us the early history and then the late, let's start up with the early history of the reception of the Gallica painting?

Well, first of all, some people, Le Cobuzier would say everybody had their backs to the painting. And in a sense he's right, because we forget that it was in an open space underneath a kind of plaza, next to it was a Catalan restaurant, opposite was a theatre which was having plays on,

in front of it was Alexander called as Mercury Fountain. There were people doing traditional dances all around in front of the painting. It was his kind of snub, but generally it was incredibly well received. People founded a very powerful, a very puzzling, yes, certainly puzzling, but they were shocked by it. I think you still see that today. But what happens is straight after the exhibition,

it's rolled up, it's sent back to Picasso's studio, and then there's a tour organised in 38 around Scandinavia. It comes back again to France and then finally it takes a tour of Britain. Starts off in the Grovener Gallery is supported by people like Ian Forster and other intellectuals

and then it goes from there up to Manchester. You missed a cut because in the Groverner Gallery it didn't make much impact. It went to the East End and Whitechapel Gallery and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of speech, which says a lot for the dissoning between Mayfair and Whitechapel really. Absolutely.

But it had briefly gone up Manchester where it'd been shown in a car showroom and had been unrolled and they couldn't even stretch it so the students nailed it up to the wall. I mean that's kind of amazing to think now. But you're absolutely right, Marvin. It's the sympathy that it gets in the Whitechapel, in the East End that would of course suffer under the Blitz later on. That's the point. Yeah, absolutely. And equally, of course, the one photo which I would love to have found but never have found is that working men brought their working men.

men's boots to put under the painting, almost like ex-vottos, to send to the troops in Spain. But of course, by then, it was already 1939. It was too late. Barcelona was to fall in just a few weeks after that. And it began to accrete a reputation which just seems to grow and grow. We might have time to come back to that. But you've given us enough. Thank you very much indeed.

Mary, how did it... Now, let's go back to Gernica with you, Dacia. What happens in Gernica after this? So how do they pull themselves together? How do they try to pull themselves together? Grenica, as I mentioned, was then invaded by the nationalist forces three days later. And one of the interesting things with Granica is that even as the wars going on in 1938, the Francoist government in Burgos sets up this thing called Regions Devastated Regions,

which is their main organism for the reconstruction of Spain. And they're already planning it, already starting to rebuild in the, nationalist side while the war is going on. Then once the war ends, this idea of devastated regions, which takes over the reconstruction of the entire country, and Greenica becomes an adopted town within this reconstruction. So there's a series of adopted towns, those that were damaged by more than 75% of damage to the towns,

become adopted in Greenica is one of them. And in all of the publicity, propaganda, magazines, exhibitions, of Regions Devastadas. Grenica is one of the kind of jewels of the crown of the reconstruction of Spain. They don't reconstruct it. They build a different town. They build a sort of Spanish escorial, Philip

the second, grim, glum, authoritarian town. Well, all the focus, so they have this very ambitious ideal of reconstructing the entire of Spain in the image of the escorial, of this glorious moment in Spanish architecture and history when it was imperial power. But the only way they managed to

really do that is in the town halls. So the main square of Guernica, its town hall, is built in this Escorallianse style with round balls and pinnacles and granite and forged iron. To make the link again, at what stage of the people of Guernica adopt the painting and say, yes, this is us? So as you suggested earlier, the first reaction is partly to reject it. And there's this fantastic photograph of the Basque government in exile standing in front of the painting in the pavilion in Paris, where Picasso, as it's being taken down, says to the Basque government, this is yours. If you want the painting, it's yours.

And the Basque government in exile says, no thank you. And that has been one of the thorns in the side of the Basques wanting to claim Greenica for the Basque country. But little by little within the Basque country, Granica becomes adopted, becomes a symbol of the suffering of the Basque country during the Franco period where owning a reproduction like the postcard that you have, in front of you of Granica is illegal. You can get thrown in jail for having a postcard. You can get thrown in jail for sending a postcard of the painting.

So it really becomes this kind of flag of the resistance against Franco. So that symbolism of it continues to grow. And as it does its tour of the world, as it becomes a kind of flag also for gaining support for the Republic. And then ends up in MoMA, of course. It just gains all of this international symbolism, which then when it returns to Granica, the Guernicaans are very proud of.

And if I can leap forward to the early 2000s when, if you remember Colin Powell standing in front of the Security Council office where there is a reproduction of Guernica, tapestry reproduction of Guernica, which was ordered by Rockefeller to be there, to hang there, to remind those going into the Security Council that they're there

to prevent war. Colin Powell announces the invasion of Iraq in front of the Security Council where they have covered up the tapestry. And the people of Greenica and in particular the survivors of the bombing write a letter of protest to the United Nations saying that tapestry, that reproduction of Gornica of what we suffered is there to remind you not to go to war.

How dare you cover it up when you're announcing that you're going to war? Briefly, Mary, can we conclude, can you conclude the civil war for us quite briefly? Yes, I can do my best. So the bombings of Durango and Gernica are the prelude, really the immediate prelude to the fall of the north. So at the time when the bombings take place, the Franquist troops are marching on the Atlantic seaboard of northern Spain,

which is Republican, the Basque Country, Santander and the mining region of Estorides. The rest of Republican territory is all in the south and eastern centre. So the Republic, at this point, has been divided. After the bombing of Gerdinika, it's only a matter of weeks, really, before the North falls. And at that point, the national... Nationalists are in command for the first time of just over half of national territory. Most significantly, they have finally got a major industrial area. Spain is not heavily industrialised, but such heavy industry as there is,

is along that northern seaboard. And there are also major Atlantic ports. So this is a very significant territorial gain for the Francoists, and it gives them clearly the advantage. From that point, the war against the Republic becomes a war of attrition. So it's what Paul Preston's called defeat by installments. The nationalist armies can now turn their attention to Madrid and Barcelona, the two great centres of population.

They will reach the sea in January 1938, so the Republic will be divided into two. Barcelona falls in January 38. Madrid falls after a political, turmoil behind the Republican lines on the 1st of April 1939 and falls without a shot being fired. Guys, can you give us a final

summary as we near the end of the programme and the status of that painting in world art as it were now? I certainly think it's the greatest painting of the 20th century, certainly the most powerful image. I can do it in two ways. First of all, you stand in front of it

and you see children coming in still today from Spanish school children four or five-year-olds and they are struck silent by the image. That's one way of looking at it. The other way is seeing that pretty well every single war today, still one of the parties will try to access and use that painting as propaganda in their favour. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Gais van Hansberg. And thank you, Mary Vincent, and thank you, Dacia, Villager, Rose. Next week, we'll be addressing the Picts. And to mark our 20th season, we'll be doing that in front of a studio audience

at the University of Glasgow. Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. I am coming back. What did he miss out? What did he not say that you wished he had a chance to say? I mean, I think there is stuff that's worth saying about the Basques. One of the reasons that the picture gained such attention

is that there is real sympathy for the Basques outside Spain. for Republican Spain in general, the fact of the revolution, which is violent and which has resulted in a lot of destruction and many, many murders, has made support for the Republic quite difficult for certain sectors. I mean, most famously, for European Catholics. But the Basques don't have any of that baggage. The Basques, it's the only part of the Republic where there hasn't not been forced collectivisation. there has not been anti-clerical violence. There is an awful lot of sympathy for the Basque, hence the evacuation of the Basque children, to Belgium, to Britain, to France. So there is a lot of humanitarian support for the Basque, and then you get Gernica. I mean, the thing that I would love to talk more about is Picassos is absolute genius in creating an image in seven weeks,

and in a sense conflating the entire history of art from Roman sarcophagi, Greek crater vase, illuminated manuscripts from the 9th century, Rubens, Goya, and turning it into his own language and absorbing the history of art and creating what is actually quite miraculous in seven weeks. I mean, any artist would be very happy to have filled a canvas, let alone make a canvas which actually did what it was asked to do, which is scream out to the world and highlight what Republican Spain was suffering. And that was what it was supposed to do

and that's what it did magnificently and with immense power. And there was a nationalist exhibition in the Vatican Pavilion, is that right? Yeah, exactly, just behind it. Where Sert, the uncle of the architect had done the bombing of the Toledo, the Alcazar as an image,

which of course for the nationalists was there, Gernica. So we had the kind of face off between these two pavilions, all in the shadow, of course, of the great two pavilions of Nazi jester. Germany and the Soviet pavilion staring down across Paris. Dathya, has the bombing marked now in Gernica?

The bombing has been marked ever since the bombing occurred, first by the Basque Government exile, and then once Franco dies, it begins to be marked inside the town more officially. And every time the painting plays a part often in those commemorations in terms of the Peace Museum in Gernica, the Culture Echa, the House of Culture in Gernica. organizing all kinds of events around exhibitions of the painting or having children do their version of the mural. But now the commemoration in Granica has lots of different kind of interest groups and communities of memory that come into it. But the one that joins everybody up is at 4.30, the church bells ring, and that is what launches a service that is held in the cemetery where there's now a mausoleum

that contains the mortal remains of those that were killed in the ball. So that's the main thing that brings everyone together. And then in the square around the Ayuntamiento, the town hall, the different groups, the survivors groups organize things. The Ayunthamiento, the town hall organizes things. And then, I mean, as you know, the Basque politics is quite fraught and quite divided. So depending on who's in the town hall, whether it's the PNUV or the Abert Chal, different kinds of ways of interpreting and talking about the commemoration,

about what happened, evolved. The most important thing perhaps was when the German president wrote a letter that was read by the German ambassador to Spain, in which he acknowledged German involvement in the bombing of Granica. And that was hugely important. And it's talked about in Granica as the apology. It wasn't an apology per se, but it was an recognition of German involvement in the bombing, which was the first time that Germany officially recognized that they had taken part in it. And so now that's remembered.

And if you speak to people in Greenica, they'll say, Germany apologized and Madrid still hasn't apologized. So there's this kind of tension there around that. One of the things I was interested in was how the painting was returned to Spain eventually. What were the circumstances there? Well, it's still, until the ex-king, Juan Carlos, either publishes his diaries, I think he was involved, actually, in the kind of behind the scenes. because if you remember in February 23rd, 1981, we had the coup attempt.

And it was literally the day before that Picasso's lawyer signed over the fact that the painting could move from America and come to Spain. And the moral rights, as it were, of the family also signed off that this could happen. But then the coup attempt happened. And it could have gone two ways. They could have said, well, you know, Picasso had always says it has to come back to a Republican democracy. and what has shown is that it's very fragile. I think a lot of pressure was put on to the Museum of Modern Art and onto the Senate to pass at Congress level or whatever

to pass the fact that it could go. And secretly it comes back in November 81 to open in front of, behind bulletproof, bomb-proof glass and allowed in is La Pasionaria and she turns around to people standing there and says, I think the, the Spanish Civil War has ended. It's seen as the last exile.

And one other thing in Guernica, and that also relates to how the Guernicans then come to have this special relationship with the painting, is there is a group of people from Grenica that take the bus from Granica all the way down to Madrid to go and see this painting at the Cason del Wendretido, and that they told me how they stood on line outside. There were long lines going all around the Cason, and they finally go in to see it. And of course, as they're going in, there is bulletproof glass,

there was this armed civil guard. They have to show their national ID cards. And on the national ID cards, Spanish national ID cards, it says where you're from. And so, of course, on their cards, there's Guernica. And so they're showing this military, armed military guards standing out the door, going, look, look, we're from Guernica. We're from Guernica.

So that kind of pride of relating to the painting and coming to own the painting very much comes when Grinika arrives in Spain for the first time. It's interesting, I think, because obviously when it goes back to Spain, it's displayed on its own, in its own house, the prado, the cason. And then, of course, it's only significantly later that it's incorporated into the rena Sofia Museum and takes its place within Spanish modern art. It's kind of reincorporated into the canon of Spanish art.

There's no longer something completely singular. But at the same time, outside Spain, it escapes those moorings altogether. So Gernica has this extraordinary afterlife in British popular music culture. with all these songs, I mean, from the clashes Spanish bombs to the Manx Street peaches, if you tolerate this, you know, that the bombing of Gernica, twinned with Coventry, becomes a symbol for the horrors of war that has really completely escaped at Spanish origins. Well, Coventry was in the back of my mind.

It was this, Gernica was a sort of dry run, well, not a dry run, what I'm going to say, rehearsal for Coventry, the same carpet bombing, the same, no opposition after a while when they run out of ammunition in Coventry, as you know, the same just raising it backwards and, forwards and backers and forwards. I mean, intolerable. What happened? You mentioned his,

was it his wife or his mistress at the time? Toramar, yeah. Yeah. Well, whatever she lived with them, but she took masses of photographs. Yeah, which most of them, the actual, on her death, I think it was about five years ago, the Rainer Sophia actually bought the series of photographs, which are now permanently on display in the museum

quite close to the picture, so you can actually work out those different stages. It's great. And it's, it is dramatic how it does change. And you can see him thinking through. And there's that wonderful quote of Picasso's where he says, I wish I could show you how paintings, the genesis and the evolution of a painting, how it doesn't actually change from the first idea to the last, but still the character is always there. And in fact, that first sketch, which it does on May the first, is enough of Gernaecor, the end painting. and you see that he's painting towards it and then away from it and back to that original idea that he's already got of the horse and the ball.

And I think they do 67 different studies. Where are they? They're owned by the Rainer Sophia as well, and many of them are actually loaned out, and of course drawings you can only show for like a month at a time because they're drawings. So they circulate those, and so there's only ever five or six drawings on display. but occasionally they actually have lent them to Gernica to some of the earlier sketches.

And for people like Jackson Pollock, actually, they felt that some of those paintings were actually better than the painting itself. The Weeping Woman, for instance, which is a kind of series which he carries on, that's Dora Amar, and he carries on doing her for about a year after he's finished the painting itself. I love the Jackson Pollock story about him looking after Gernica in the room. telling people, he got himself a job, didn't he? Carataker in that room, and if anybody came in when he was really studying it,

told him to get out or he'd take them out and give him or something in the street. Is that true? Yeah, yeah, apparently. I mean, if they criticised the painting, I mean, he felt that it was kind of, it was almost his, and actually he did lots of versions of kind of mini, kind of Jackson Pollock twists

on the kind of contorted animals in the painting. There's that fantastic anecdote, which maybe you can say whether it's accurate or not, of Picasso being in his Grand Agustin studio and being there with Granica and German soldiers coming into his studio, seeing the painting, and asking Picasso, did you do this?

And Picasso saying, no, you did. Is it true, is it? We will never know. We will never know. But you know, Granica itself, they've renamed all these streets. So there's a mural reproduction of Granica of the painting in Gernica in the town,

which was done in ceramic tiles. So on a street in the town of Gernica, you look up and you see the painting. And also one of the things they've done, well, there's all of the different reproductions of it, is that sense of just having it everywhere and renaming. They've renamed one of the main squares,

which was El Ferial, which received the biggest charge of bombing, which was called Fernand el-Catholico, Fernand the Catholic of the Catholic kings. They've renamed it. Pablo Picasso Square. So Picasso has very much been owned by Greenica, and you have a bar called Del Garnica,

where the napkins have little reproductions of Picasso's painting. So it's really all over the place in Greenica. Do you want to hear of coffee? Well, keep it going, because I want to tell the listeners who will be puzzled that the man who took over ground control was Simon, the producer, and multitasking to a fault is now offering us coffee or tea, after which you get ready for making me.

Tea and believe, Simon, that would be lovely. Coffee, please. Hello, I'm Neil McGregor, and I'd like to invite you to listen to my new 30-part series about faith and society. For the whole of human history, believing and belonging have gone together. And in this series, I'm looking at objects and places

to see how those shared beliefs have helped to build communities and also to divide them. It's called Living with the Gods, but it's just as much about how we live with each other. other. You can download the programs from the Radio 4 website or on the IPlayer radio app. And there's also a free podcast to which you can subscribe. Search online for Living with the Gods.