Feelings of the Day: Empathy is not a weakness, but an important value in a community. Those without it, who prefer only things and people that are like them, destroy countries from within through tribalism and factions. When put in charge they easily treat “the other” as less than human. We need more empathy in our lives and to promote representatives into office who consistently show this trait.
Full Days Events: I worked on my travel diary while eating a breakfast of Basque cheesecake and waiting for the ding that the RJGM crew were ready. Ding received, I met them near their accommodations for the next leg of our journey: Gernika-Lumo.
Gernika (the Basque name for the town but called Guernica in Spanish) was established on the 28th of April in 1366 as a strategic docking point and soon grew into an important trading community. The oak tree of Gernika became the place where town assemblies occurred and laws voted on. Joining up with the nearby parish of Lumo, the town grew as industrial factories were built. By 1936 the population was around 7000.
In 1937, the dictator Franco wanted to break the back of the Basque peoples and the Spanish Republican government. He was already getting assistance from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy with planes from their air forces. On April 26th he requested both air forces conduct mass aerial bombing on civilians in the town of Gernika. It was market day and the town had swelled to around 10000. The bombing lasted three hours, involved 24 bombers for the first run and 29 for the second, used 22 tons of explosive and incendiary bombs, and destroyed 75% of the buildings. Afterwards, Hitler demanded Franco absolve Germany of any responsibility. The destruction wrought by the majority German air force made appeasement to Germany, in upcoming years, more common. It is regarded as an early example of terror bombing or a bombing targeting civilian populations with the aim of reducing a country's morale.
I saw Picasso’s Guernica two years ago, at the Reina Sofia in Madrid. Although I had read about the history of this town and what occurred here before seeing it, his art brought it all together in one solid lump of despair and tragedy. There is a reason why a tapestry copy of it resides in the United Nations building, in New York, on a wall near the entrance to the Security Council room. In Gernika there is a mosaic of Picasso’s work.
Parking beside a robust park we walked through its barely curated nature to get to the other side. When walking amongst the streets of this town, I noted that most of the buildings seen were new though the town is very old because of the aforementioned reasons. The buildings that were old were put back together to show the scars of what remained. This is what brought the tragedy to me even before seeing the large pictures of the night and aftermath of the bombing displayed in the plaza mayor. The town has a powerful feeling of focused anger against despots and bullies alongside a desire for a world at peace. I am glad we came here to this place that carries on after the actions of self-centred dictators.
After driving South for a while, it was time for lunch. As per the tradition, it took four tries to find a spot to eat before we settled on Restaurante Lapatza. It was a place by a well-used highway where people going from one place to another would stop and rest. The manager of the establishment is the kind of lady who had seen it all and could handedly deal with those who stepped out of line with a wry smile before verbally knocking them down. We all had robust tasty sandwiches and shared a natural low alcohol cider bottle with lots of cloudy goodness.
After driving East in the Fuenmayor area, we turned South again along the Iregua river in the Rioja region. Here the rocky land reached higher than our car could rise in altitude until we were shown marvelous mountain views of raw nature. They reminded me of a much greener American SW and it kept everyone awake with the spectacular views.
Once we arrived back in Almazan I went back to my place to rest until we met back up again for a light supper and cheese. I picked up some lovely orange peel chocolates from the Yemas place for a shared dessert. 5.2km and 23 flights walked.
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