Nowadays, we find ourselves living in times when we have to suffer the wave of historical revisionism whose goal is to make the world believe that Francoism and the atrocious tragedy the insurgents, and the illegal régime they imposed on the Basques south of the Pyrenees and the Spanish, is a trifling matter that is exaggerated by the vindictive losers of the war (that is to say, the anti-fascists). That work of the historical (and familial) heirs of the rebels takes special interest in downplaying the importance of the Bombing of Guernica. We’ve spoken about this tragic event many times here on the blog, and we’ve made special mention of that desire of the Franco revisionist historians’ desire to make little of the tragedy that befell the Sacred City of the Basques.
These are the days when we recall the fall of the Basque territory controlled by the Republic, under the leadership of the Basque Government, when the insurgent troops marched into Bilbao, thereby marking the end of the Spanish Civil War in the Basque Country and opening the doors to 40 years of misfortune to the Basques in the south, even those who had sided with the insurgents. The Sabino Arana Fundazioa is organizing a series of conferences in which world experts will reflect on some of the main events that occurred in that convulsive time.
Today, we bring you the video of the conference given by Xabier Irujo Amezaga, PhD in history and philosophy and professor at the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. It’s titled “26-4-1937, el día que murió Gernika (April 26, 1937, the Day Guernica Died)”.
Xabier Irujo is the author of the book El Gernika de Richthofen, the product of six years of work, which bring to light over 12,000 documents from over 20 archives in Europe and America, most of them previously unpublished, which shed light on some of the most controversial aspects of the Bombing of Guernica.
(2018) Moreover, in 2017, he published the book Gernika: 26 de abril de 1937, which takes a new look at new information about this war crime and its tragic consequences.
His conference is not only interesting and easy to follow, but also provides key information to tear apart many of the lies regarding this Crime against Humanity that some continue to repeat with the support of leading Spanish media outlets, political powers, and publishing houses.
We’ll leave you with the link to the news item about the conference on the Sabino Arana Fundazioa website, along with a video of the whole conference divided into three parts.
One part was especially interesting to us, when referring to the “numbers war” regarding how many deaths the bombing caused. Xabier de Irujo lays it out clearly (in the second video at timestamp 19:20):
Ni el Lehendakari Aguirre, ni Leizaola ni Irala eran mentirosos. Ellos dijeron que en ese bombardeo hubo 1.654 muertos y nadie ha sido capaz de rebatir esos datos.
Neither Lehendakari Aguirre, nor Leizaola, nor Irala were liars. They said that there were 1,654 deaths during that bombing, and no one has been able to refute those data.
The testimonies he retells about the days following the bombing are terrible, so terrible that all we can think about anyone who would deny the tragedy of Guernica in all its intensity can only be either an ignorant or a wretch.
Be sure to watch the reasons why this bombing was an exceptional case, to be found at the beginning of the third video.
We’ll leave you with the links to his two books, and to the conference.
El Gernika de Richthofen: Un ensayo de bombardeo de terror
Sabino Arana Fundazioa – 18/6/2013 – Euskadi
Conferencia de Xabier Irujo Amezaga sobre el bombardeo de Gernika.
En el marco de los actos organizados por el Archivo del Nacionalismo Vasco con motivo de su 20 aniversario, el 13 de junio de 2013, en GOAZ museum, sede de Sabino Arana Fundazioa, el doctor en Historia y Filosofía y profesor en el Centro de Estudios Vascos de la Universidad de Nevada-Reno, Xabier Irujo, impartió la conferencia, que lleva por título “26-4-1937, el día que murió Gernika”.
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26-4-1937 El día en que murió Gernika”· Conferencia de Xabier Irujo (el 13 de junio de 2013)
Last Updated on Dec 20, 2020 by About Basque Country
