Guernica anniversary
80 years on , Picasso's powerful anti-war Guernica still resonates Exactly 80 years ago, in a crowded market square, the small Basque town of Guernica was bombed by Nazi aircraft at the behest of General Francisco Franco. Days later Picasso heard about the attack and painted Guernica in a Paris attic, a haunting work of art that has become a universal howl against the ravages of war , from 1937 Spain to 2017 Syria. The canvas mixes stark images of agonising humans and animals to depict the horror of the bombing of the small Basque town of Guernica on April 26, 1937 during Spain's civil war. Luis Ortiz Alfau, a 100-year-old Spaniard, was there that day "to pick up the dead and the injured," he told AFP. " Around 4:00 pm, three planes started arriving every 15 minutes, they were German and Italian planes," said the former soldier on the Republican side. "They dropped explosive bombs , then incendiary bombs, and the town started to b...