This website provides some additional information and photos to complement my two books detailed above and which I accumulated when researching the books. The intention is to continue to populate the website and at the time of writing (October 2020) there are no sections yet dealing with the Welsh maritime heroes. Both books are available to purchase at Amazon.
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Most of the photos have been taken by myself. Acknowledgement of the others can be found with the images. If there are any errors in this regard I will immediately rectify them if contacted.
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HOW IT BEGAN
MADRID
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It was a scorching day in Madrid with temperatures pushing 35 degrees. The buildings seemed to emit an incandescent heat, the sky was a splendid azure and the streets bustled with crowds of people. I was making my way to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Spain’s national museum of 20th century art. The train I was travelling on glided into the famous Atocha station, Madrid’s largest and the focal point for commuter trains, inter-city and AVE high speed trains. Estacion de Atocha was the site of the tragic terrorist bombing in 2004 which killed 191 people and wounded 1,755. The Reina Sophia museum was just around the corner. It originated as San Carlos hospital built by the king Felipe II in the sixteenth century. The current museum was opened in 1992 and named after Queen Sofia. It is mainly devoted to Spanish art and there is a large collection of the paintings of Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali. My quest was to view Picasso’s evocative “Guernica”.
PICASSO
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My view of Picasso changed dramatically after a visit to the Picasso museum in Barcelona. It is essential to an understanding of his formative years and over 4000 works in the permanent collection demonstrate his genius. I was amazed at his versatility as he changed and developed his style and technique and how he was able to replicate the art of those he associated with. Perhaps that’s because I always thought “cubism” when I thought Picasso. However, art critics talk about his blue period in which he painted scenes of poverty and anguish; his more optimistic rose period with its warm colours; the abstract forms of his cubist era; the reality of his classical period; and the visually unexpected of his surrealist time.
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Replica of the 'Guernica' in the town of Gernika. Photo - Author
It was Picasso's involvement in surrealism that gave birth to what many people regard as one of the greatest paintings of all time. This is what I had come to see – the Guernica. It was painted and exhibited at first in Paris, and Picasso refused to let it go to Spain until freedom and democracy had been restored there. Now it is permanently displayed in its own gallery, protected by two museum attendants who keep the public a respectable distance away from it. There are about a hundred recorded sketches, some of them in colour, which gave rise to the huge canvas in black, white and grey oils. It reminded me of a medieval altar with a central panel and two side panels. The devotees in the gallery gazed in awe at the powerful composition. So why was I here and what was the fascination of this complex and chaotic assault on the emotions? The reason I wanted to see the Guernica was because it portrayed the atrocity committed by Franco on the citizens of Gernika in the Spanish Civil War and epitomises the outrage felt by many people in Europe at the time and, in particular, the volunteers from Wales who went to Spain to fight against Fascism
Monday the 27th July 2015 was market day in Gernika, a town in the Basque country in northern Spain. With its own pre-Indo European language, its own train and bus service, its own police force and a climate quite unlike the rest of Spain, Euskal Herria (the land of the Basque language) has a colourful history in the struggle for independence. Thirty kilometres from Bilbao, the beating heart of the Basque country, is the town of Gernika. My first impression on arriving in the town was that of a modern, fairly prosperous community surrounded by attractive and lush grassy hills. A church perched precariously on a hill and window boxes adorned pitched roof houses on the hillsides. On this market day people had come from the surrounding areas and were either enjoying the pintxos (Basque tapas) in the many cafes or busy buying from the expansive range of vegetables with unpronounceable names and amazing sizes.
On the 26th April 1937 Gernika was at the heart of the agricultural area and the largest agricultural and livestock market was held there every Monday. People from surrounding villages would have swelled the population that day as farmers brought their produce to sell. However, the people knew that this was no ordinary market day. Despite being calm and going about their business, there was a fear of what might happen in the light of recent bombings in the area and, in particular, the bombing of the nearby town of Durango.
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DURANGO
It is not often mentioned today that on the 31st March 1937, a month before the attack on Gernika, German and Italian planes carried out bombing raids on that beautiful town of Durango killing two hundred and fifty people. There were no reporters to tell the world, but even today I was able to find plenty of visible evidence from the shrapnel holes in the basilica of Santa Maria, which was obviously targeted, and in a number of buildings close by. The people were celebrating Mass at the time of the raid and the priest and fourteen nuns died in the attack.
THE BOMBING OF GERNIKA
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In Gernika the authorities had tried to cancel the market and access from many places was blocked. The pelota game that afternoon had been cancelled and many parents had kept their children home from school or sent them to relatives in farms outside the town. The details of what happened are still disputed by some historians. In 1985 Gernikazarra History Taldea was founded to attempt to rediscover the personal memories of that tragic day and of the subsequent reconstruction of the town. Their exhibitions in the Gernika Peace Museum and their publications help to construct the events of the day. Despite bizarre denials by the Nationalists and claims that the town was set on fire by Basque soldiers, it is clear from the resulting destruction and the eye-witness reports that Franco with the Luftwaffe’s Condor Legion and the Italian Aviazione Legionaria unleashed an aerial attack on the town with devastating results. Although the town was the location of a Spanish weapons manufacturer and was in Republican territory, it is generally agreed that this was an example of terror bombing with the aim of destroying the morale of the Basque people.
All photos - Author
The Luftwaffe had already used this tactic over Durango and Madrid. The commanding officer of the Condor Legion was Oberstleutnant Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen, brother of Manfred, known as the Red Baron in the First World War. After studying engineering he joined Hitler’s Luftwaffe, and championed the Stuka dive bombers. Some still argue that the raid was to stop supplies to the Basque battalions at Bilbao by destroying roads and the bridge. That is an extraordinary explanation of what took place. The Renteria Bridge, an easy target on the edge of the town was left standing, as was the Astra weapons factory left untouched. I had expected this factory to be further out from the town, but when I found it the building was a stone’s throw from the railway station and would have been easily identifiable alongside the track. It is perhaps more relevant to understand that Franco had said that to save Spain from Marxism he was prepared to shoot half the country, and a favourite rallying cry of Franco’s was Viva la muerte- long live death. Indeed a few years before the attack the German military strategist M.K.L.Dertzen wrote: “If cities are destroyed by flames, if women and children were victims of suffocating gases, if the population in open cities far from the front perish due to bombs dropped from planes, it will be impossible for the enemy to continue the war. Its citizens will plead for an immediate end to hostilities”.
Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff was a World War I general and manager of Germany’s war effort. After the war he was prominent in the Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei , a right-wing, anti-Jewish political party and, with Adolf Hitler, was part of the “Beer Hall Putsch”, an attempt to seize power in Munich. It was Ludendorff who developed the theory of “Total War” in his 1935 book, Der totale Krieg. The idea was that in war all available resources and people are mobilised and the distinction between combatants and civilians is blurred. ‘Total war is not only aimed against the armed forces, but also directly against the people.’ ‘So richtet sich also der totale Krieg nicht nur gegen die Wehrmacht, sondern auch unmittelbar gegen die Völker.’
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In Fascist Italy General Giulio Douhet, an expert on strategic air power, believed that to gain command of the air was to render an enemy harmless. With large numbers of aircraft such an offensive use of air power can isolate an enemy’s army or navy, destroy a country’s industrial base, stop a moving train, crush an enemy’s resistance, break people’s morale and spread terror and panic. So the strategy was already in place in military thinking, the tactics converged and the air forces combined to produce one of the first aerial bombings of defenceless citizens and a rehearsal of the bloody terror unleashed by the Luftwaffe’s blitzkrieg of the Second World War.
The Renteria Bridge, Gernika, today
The Astra factory, Gernika, today
All photographs by Author
The Astra factory air raid shelter today
It started at 4.30pm with a single black speck against a blue sky and the bell of Santa Maria rang three times warning the people they were about to be attacked. The Astra Factory’s siren also wailed as its workers ran to the shelter just outside the building. Both the factory and the shelter can be seen today and visitors can walk inside the long haunting tunnel of the shelter. Soon the speck in the sky became a lone plane, a German Dornier light bomber, and the first dozen or so 50 kg bombs terrified the inhabitants as they scattered for cover. The planes came from airports in Vitoria and Burgos, 50 and 135 kilometres away respectively, coming in from the sea, flying along the estuary at low altitude. There does not seem unanimity about the type of aircraft but most would agree that three Italian Saboyas-79, medium twin-engined bombers, theoretically targeted the Rentaria bridge dropping thirty-six light explosive bombs. Up to this point the damage was limited and the bridge was not hit. The third group included a Heinkel-111, a fast medium bomber, used by the Luftwaffe at the beginning of World War 11, escorted by five Italian Fiat fighters, dropping about 36 50kg bombs. But this was only the start of Operation Rugen. After a twenty minute pause all hell broke loose. At about 6.30pm another two waves of bombing saw three squadrons of Junker 52s, with nine planes in each squadron, escorted by German Messerschmitt Bf109s and Italian Fiat fighters, devastate the town. The squadrons of Junkers successively dropped 50kg delay fuse bombs and 1kg incendiary bombs. The fighter planes then strafed the roads targeting anyone moving. The fires raged through the town, three quarters of the building were destroyed and the massive carpet bombing created carnage in the town. Basque figures suggested over 1600 killed and over 800 wounded, yet there is disagreement over those numbers. Today Gernikazarra estimates a figure of about 200 killed. 71% of the buildings were destroyed and only 1% were untouched. The latter included the industrial area, the palaces, the convents, the Assembly House and the famous tree of Gernika.
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Two journalists were there in Guernica soon after the bombing. One was the Australian war correspondent, Noel Monks, who covered the war for the Daily Express of London, and the other journalist was George Steer, war correspondent with the Times. Nicholas Rankin has written about their experiences of Gernika. Ironically both journalists witnessed the fringe of the horrific raid on the town. Steer and two other journalists had to take refuge in a bomb-hole on the same afternoon when six Heinkel 51s strafed them with wild shooting, but to no avail. Monks had driven through the town on the same day, and about eighteen miles east his party too had to crouch in the mud of a hole to shelter from low flying Heinkels. Later that evening at dinner with other journalists Monks described how a government official, tears streaming down his face, burst into the dining room crying, “Gernika is destroyed. The Germans bombed and bombed and bombed.” The journalists made immediately for the town and ten miles away could see the reflection of Gernika’s flames in the sky. As they drew nearer, on both sides of the road, men, women and children were sitting, dazed. A priest, his face blackened and his clothes in tatters, just pointed to the flames, still about four miles away, then whispered, “Aviones . . . bombas . . . mucho, mucho…….”. Monks helped weeping Basque soldiers collect charred bodies; there were flames and smoke and grit, and houses were collapsing into the inferno. Steer had picked up and taken away as evidence remnants of thermite incendiary bombs marked with the initials of the German Rheindorf factory, dated 1936. When Nationalist troops entered the town it was closed off for five days while craters were filled in and petrol cans scattered around to make it look as if the “Reds” had set fire to the buildings and the Asturians had dynamited them. Yet the photograph of cans outside the church of Santa Maria disseminated by Francoists fooled nobody. What appeared to be a technical experiment, a firestorm in the centre of a populated town, an attempt to demoralise the civil population and a strike at the heart of the Basque people meant that a line had been crossed.
In his Times report Steer wrote: “……In the form of its execution and the scale of the destruction it wrought, no less than in the selection of its objective, the raid on Guernica is unparalleled in military history. Guernica was not a military objective…..the object of the bombardment was seemingly the demoralization of the civil population and the destruction of the cradle of the Basque race”.
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More about Picasso’s Guernica
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It is said about Picasso that when he was in Paris, which was occupied by the Germans, he was visited in his studio by some German officers. When he was asked about the huge canvas which was to be his Guernica - "Haben Sie das gemacht?" (Did you do this?), he replied, “Nein , das haben Sie gemacht." (No you did it). The Guernica was Picasso’s powerful response to the horror of the bombing and the obscenity of war. It remains a compelling enigma to me. I have read so many interpretations at different levels of understanding from Picasso’s egotism to his possible use of demonic imagery. I agree with those people who say that every painting is painted twice (at least) – by the artist and by the viewer, or that every painting is a self-portrait to some extent. I prefer to see the Guernica as simply as I can – a portrayal of the terror, the chaos, and the grief of that day and the revulsion at what is to come. Picasso once said: "My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against reaction and the death of art. In the picture I am painting — which I shall call Guernica — I am expressing my horror of the military caste which is now plundering Spain into an ocean of misery and death."
Picasso was reluctant to explain the symbolism in the painting. On the one hand it presents a woman grieving with her dead child in her arms; a horse falling in agony with a gaping wound in its side; a bull watching the misery from the side; a severed arm, a broken sword; an evil eye; a figure with arms raised in terror engulfed by fire. On the other hand we see a dove holding an olive branch; an arm holding out a lamp; a flower growing out of a shattered sword. For me Guernica is a testament to the horrors of Fascism, a potent statement against the brutality of war and the violation of the vulnerable and innocent, and a glimpse of the possibility of hope and peace.
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Spanish Civil War Memorial
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Around the same time as my visit to Madrid I was made aware of the memorial plaque on the wall of the foyer of the offices of Pembrey and Burry Port Town Council. I had passed it on a number of occasions before without realising its significance. The plaque is a memorial to the men from Wales who were killed during the Spanish Civil War. It reads: “To the immortal memory of the Welshmen who with their comrades of Spain and of many nations in the rank of International Brigades gave their lives in support of the heroic struggle of the Spanish Republic against Fascism.” We are told on the plaque, on which the names of those who died are inscribed, that it was “unveiled on 27th of February of l997 by Evan Jones of Llanelli who served in the International Brigade during the conflict, returning home after being seriously wounded in the Battle of the Ebro.”
Evans Jones had been wounded and lost his arm on the infamous Hill 481 near Gandesa at the battle of the Ebro. The plaque hangs awkwardly opposite a memorial to those killed in World Wars 1 and 2, since those volunteers in Spain went without the blessing of the British Government, who maintained a policy of non-intervention and stood by as Hitler and Mussolini gave succor to Franco. The volunteers had often slipped out of their houses without the knowledge of their families and met up with others secretly in cafes and shops in Cardiff, London and Paris and dodged detectives at the train station in London. Most were politically active as trade unionists, member of the Communist or Labour Party, hunger marchers; many were unemployed miners and most were working class with the fighting spirit of the coalfield and the impoverished.
Evan Jones of Llanelli
Courtesy Deputy Director RGASPI, Moscow
Unprepared and sometimes incredulous, these volunteers, as members of the legendary International Brigades, became imbibed in a Civil War which cruelly created a rupture in the heart of Spain which has never fully healed. Today many people in Spanish towns and villages talk about the Civil War in hushed terms while others want to know about the conflict which overthrew a democratically elected Republican government and in which many of their grandparents perished. I feel that there is a growing curiosity and a gentle boldness in Spain to revisit the traumas of the past in order to understand some things of the present. When I visited Durango in the Basque country I was the first English speaking visitor to try out the newly produced audio guide which took me to the many sites affected by the bombing of that town. A booklet had only recently been written in Spanish and Euscara and not yet translated into English.
Generally, when the Welsh volunteers returned they were greeted as heroes and predecessors of the WW2 fight against Fascism. Yet many of them felt betrayed by the Government and were at first unwilling to share their experiences and many communities were unsure of how to receive them back. However, as time went on men such as Evan Jones of Llanelli sought to erect plaques, men such as Alun Menai Williams, the last Welsh Brigader to die, began to write their memoirs and biographies and historians began to carefully place together the pieces of the jigsaw. Now plaques, relief carvings, memorial stones remembering the Welsh Brigaders can be seen in Ammanford, Burry Port, Llanelli, Swansea, Cardiff, Aberdare, Blackwood, Blaenavon, Caerphilly, Ebbw Vale, Maerdy Bridge, Merthyr, Pentre, Neath, Penygroes and Porthcawl.
My book on the Welsh Brigaders explores what happened to these men and women, where and how they died, although there is little or no known information about many of them. It also tries to understand the reason why these men went to fight in another country and what their values and beliefs were. The book is not primarily a history of Spain or of the Spanish Civilian War. It follows the experiences of the Welsh Brigaders and explores my understanding of and my feelings towards some of the enigmas of human experience, action, ideology and motivation reflected in the commitment of young people of Wales to a cause thousands of miles from where they grew up. It is also a book about values and commitment, and asks questions about how we should live and what we should believe to become fulfilled human beings.
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'You are Legend: The Welsh Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War' is published by Welsh Academic Press.