On this date in 1937 the German Luftwaffe conducted its first terror bombing of a civilian target, the Spanish town of Guernica. The raid was in support of Franco’s Fascist forces in their eventually successful campaign to overthrown the legitimate government of France. The bombing is most notably remembered through Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica, painted while he was in exile in Paris. It was Picasso’s wish that the painting not be moved to Spain until freedom and democracy was restored to Spain. Following Franco’s death in 1975 it was another six years before it arrived in Spain. It was greeted by more than 1 million people.
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