This article was translated by John R. Bopp
Over the last few months, a group of people in Dublin have gotten together to organize the Gernika 80 Committee, and have been preparing a series of activities to commemorate, in that nation so closely tied to the Basques, the 80th anniversary of the destruction of the Basque Holy City at the hands of fascists.
Stewart Reddin, one of the members of this Committee, has organized the activities that have ended up in an article; a lengthy article, because the list of events they’ve organized is quite long. These activities helped us be able to tell (since they were listed in the Irish Times) all our readers about the story of Prendergast, the Irishman who joined the Basque Nationalist Party’s militias to defend the Basque Country from fascism.
Among the activities that were organized, we’d like to highlight the planting of a sapling of the Tree of Guernica is the historical Glasnevin cemetery in Dublin, where figures in the world of Irish nationalism ar buried.
Revista Gernika 80 Then and Now — 80 years of Basque Irish anti-fascist struggles
We also found the publication of the Gernika 80 Then and Now: 80 Years of Basque-Irish Anti-Fascist Struggles 40-page magazine very interesting. Among the topics discussed is an article that explains the presence of Basque priest Ramón Laborda in Ireland, as he was sent by the government of Lehendakari Agirre to explain, in a number of conferences, the reality of the Basques who were fighting the insurrection. It’s interesting to go over the controversy that arose in the Catholic Church around this visit, as it left those who claimed that the Spanish Civil War was a confrontation between Catholics and the “enemies of Christ” without any arguments in the very Catholic Ireland.
Thanks to this article, we have a detailed overview of everything that’s been organized, and we can’t help but congratulate the organizers for their commitment and their efforts.
Medium – 28/4/2017 – Irlanda
80th anniversary of the fascist bombing of Gernika marked with a weekend of events in Dublin
The 80th anniversary of the fascist bombing of the Basque town of Gernika, immortalised in the painting by Pablo Picasso, was marked last weekend (21st to 23rd April) during a series of events in Dublin organised by the Gernika 80 Committee.
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Last Updated on Dec 20, 2020 by About Basque Country
