A screaming horse. A mother crying over her dead baby. A man dragging his injured body along the street. A faint dove of peace in mourning.
Standing before “Guernica” in Gernika, with its painful reminders of the atrocities that humans inflict on each other, does not constitute a fun touristic adventure, but it is a necessary one. Some call it dark tourism, and they’re not wrong. But if you truly want to understand how a place came to be the way it is, investigating the underbelly helps.
Pablo Picasso painted his enormous creation called “Guernica” in 1937 to let the world know what Spanish dictator Francisco Franco had inflicted on the Basque town in northwestern Spain, even though most Spanish people uncovered the full truth much later.
When our road trip to France took us near Gernika (Basque spelling; Spanish is “Guernica”), we made sure our route included the town.
The Gernika mural
The town of Gernika displayed its life-size ceramic-tile reproduction of Picasso’s painting outside, where all passersby could see it.
At the top of a short residential street, we found the full-size ceramic tile replica of Picasso’s painting. Begonias and dusty miller flanked the ends. Lights along its base indicated it’s lit up at night.
And oh, is it large! It’s 25.5 feet long and 11.5 feet high. I’d forgotten just how imposing the size alone is, adding to its overwhelming impact. We had seen the original painting in the Reina Sofia art museum in Madrid a few years ago.
We stood for a while, then sat on a bench, studying the grey, black, and white images that depicted the unspeakable atrocities that humans inflict on each other. When Picasso made those atrocities well known, he made them speakable, gave them a voice. Because to not speak of them makes them easier to forget, to sweep under the carpet as one generation follows another.
Gernika has embraced those memories, the good and the ugly, so people will not forget.
Dictator Franco hated the Basque people because they wanted their independence. Gernika was, and still is, the heart of Basque separatism. During the Spanish Civil War, Franco enlisted the help of Italy and Germany to try to oust the Basque resistance forces. Germany’s new Luftwaffe military air force was keen to experiment with a new strategy of bombing that involved waves of bombs all out of proportion to the town’s size. (The Germans later used this Blitzkrieg strategy in the Second World War.)
On April 26, 1937, they strafed Gernika with wave after wave of air bombers, destroying 85 percent of the buildings over three hours. The numbers of dead are still being debated. Franco unsuccessfully denied the bombing, saying international reporters had lied and claiming the locals had deliberately burned and dynamited their own town.
The slogan at the bottom of the tile mural – “GUERNICA” GERNIKARA – means the people of Gernika want the painting to be displayed in Gernika, not Madrid.
The rest of the world, however, was outraged that civilians had been intentionally targeted. (It was a first.) Picasso, who wasn’t usually politically motivated, began the painting a few weeks later and it was displayed at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris. (A tapestry copy hangs in the United Nations building, outside the Security Council meeting room, in New York City.)
Behind the tile mural, houses climbed the hill. Across the street, apartment buildings looked directly onto it. What must it be like to have this view every day? How could that terror and pain not affect you? Or maybe people get used to it and it becomes, well, perhaps not meaningless, but they grow numb to it?
A woman walked past and didn’t look at it. Same for two mothers and two daughters. Most tourists gazed for a minute or two, then continued to the next Gernika landmark.
I pondered: Who am I in this painting? The mother searching for her child? The mother with a dead child in her arms, crying in anguish? My imagination just couldn’t go there.
Fortunately, the two most politically important symbols of Basque identity survived the bombing: the Gernika Tree and the Biscayan Assembly House. We visited them next.
Gernika Tree
The oldest Gernika Tree, planted in 1742, is protected by a colonnade (left). The current official Gernika Tree is on the right. The middle photo of an old photo shows the bare trunk of a previous Gernika Tree.
Under the spreading branches of an oak tree, the Basques received their autonomy in the Middle Ages. Meetings have been documented back to the 1300s, and Basque politicians have been meeting ever since to draw up their own laws, administer justice, and swear to uphold what are called the “fueros,” laws based on community custom and usage.
Eventually – probably due to all the rain that falls in this part of northwestern Spain – they moved their meetings indoors. First, they met in a nearby hermitage and church; then, in the Biscayan Assembly House, built in the early 1800s beside the tree. That’s why the tree and the Assembly House became symbols of the Basque independence movement.
We wandered the grounds around the Assembly House, planted with many beautiful oak trees. The oldest official Gernika Tree still there was planted in 1742. It’s now just a section of tree trunk protected by a colonnaded pavilion. We walked around it.
All successive Gernika Trees are direct descendants, via their acorns, of the original. The successor to the 1742 oak lived from 1860 to 2004 – 144 years. The next had a short reign, from 2005 to just 2015, when the current tree was planted. It’s risky business using a living plant as a symbol, since they inevitably fade away and die. But the Gernika Tree is no less revered as a symbol of Basque culture and identity.
“The various oak trees follow one another like the soul of the Basque Country, which is passed down through the generations,” read a label inside the Assembly House. “There will always be an oak tree under whose shade the assemblies will meet.”
Biscayan Assembly House
We spotted the Gernika Tree symbol throughout the complex: in the Assembly Chamber (left) and all the other corridors and rooms. One window (right) looked out on the current Gernika Tree.
We booked a time to tour the beautiful neoclassical-style Biscayan Assembly House but arrived early. The friendly man at the door shrugged and let us in anyhow. The tour is self-guided.
In the first room, the Assembly Chamber, portraits of the Lords of Biscay looked down on the tiered rows of burgundy seats where regional government politicians still meet. A gorgeous octagonal wood ceiling, with intricate marquetry details between the beams, rose above us.
The Stained Glass Room got its nickname for obvious reasons. The stained-glass ceiling covered what was once an open courtyard.
Next door was the most striking room – the so-called Stained Glass Room. Installed in 1985, the huge stained-glass ceiling depicts the Gernika Tree, alongside men representing local economic activities: fishermen, miners, farmers, steelworkers, and a man holding the Basque law book. Around the edge are representative buildings from the main towns of the region.
We examined various displays around the room, including a model of the Assembly House, and voting balls. In the 1600s, slips of paper with town names were inserted into small silver balls, then placed in large glass bowls on pedestals. Presumably, they were then opened and counted.
We examined small silver voting balls (left) and craned our necks to take in the features of the famous stained-glass ceiling. A jai alai sculpture adorned the Gernika court’s exterior (right).
The next room was a two-storey library. A scrolled-wrought-iron balcony circled the upper level, with glass-doored wooden bookcases on both levels. I love a beautiful library, even when I can’t read any books – they seemed to all be written in the Basque language, officially called “Euskara.”
We left the Assembly House late in the day, so we postponed the rest of our Gernika tour until the morning. We also needed a break from heavy thinking, so we went in search of dinner.
Nice town, good pintxos
Our pintxos included gildas (left), shrimp and crab salad (right), and jamon topped with a stuffed mushroom and a Gernika pepper. Plus Riojas wine and beer…
Apart from its sombre history, Gernika is an agreeable, walkable town with the odd pretty building that survived the bombing. And it has plenty of pintxos bars – the Basque version of tapas. We went barhopping for dinner, sampling as many pintxos as we could reasonably stuff into ourselves.
At the first bar, chosen simply because it was called Picasso, we ate gildas (olive, hot pepper and anchovy on a pick over a slice of fresh baguette-type bread). I messaged our Spanish daughter, Roxy, to ask if it was too late to order vermouth, since I didn’t want to violate any Spanish food rules. But she was at work and didn’t reply. Rats. I went with a red Ramõn Bilbao 2022 from the Rioja wine region, a tempranillo (the grape), and proclaimed it excellent.
At the next bar, we savoured toasted baguette slices with jamon, stuffed mushroom and Gernika pepper, as well as bread slices topped with crab salad and a shrimp. A distressing number of old people with walkers were in the bars with us. I thought pintxos/tapas was a younger person’s scene, but apparently not on a Tuesday in Gernika.
My notes grew increasingly hazy. At the third bar, I wrote: “vino tinto not sure what it is but it’s good.” Bar #4: “B beer of some sort.” By then, I had switched to tonic water. We also ate a seedy bun with bacon, egg, cheese and a red pepper sauce, and tortilla with crab, lettuce, tomato and scrambled egg.
Roxy finally replied and said vermouth was more of a midday Spanish tradition, but tapas are good any time. She was right.
Bombing Route
Gernika is sprinkled with black-and-white photos showing the effects of the bombing. The Pasealeku bomb shelter entrance is on the far side of the square.
Information panels along the “Bombing Route” through town showed old photos of buildings that had been there before, explaining their history, what happened during the bombing, and what had been built in its place. We paused before many as we explored the town further the next morning.
The bombing route also included several air raid shelters. Because of previous bombings in the area, all Basque towns had been constructing shelters, but they weren’t all complete by April 26, 1937.
The entrance to the Pasealeku shelter is a modest door on a square between two schools, where we had seen kids riding bikes and playing football (soccer) the previous evening.
Bill peered into one of four dark 10-metre-deep rooms in the Pasealeku air raid shelter.
“The wall on that side backs onto the hillside,” recalled one townsman. “All we did was dig four cave-shaped shelters in the hillside.” That’s why this shelter was considered the safest.
Inside the Pasealeku shelter, we walked along a corridor that linked the four cave-like rooms, peering into them and trying to imagine the people’s fear. They had huddled in the dark and heat, with no electricity, for long, long hours, listening to bombs exploding and destroying their town. They even licked moisture off the walls to relieve their thirst.
Euskal Herria Museum
Basque people used to blow horns to summon each town’s representatives to meetings under the Gernika Tree.
The Euskal Herria Museum, housed in the old Alegria Palace that had survived the bombing, explained and illustrated Basque history and culture quite well.
Maps, models of buildings, photos, and paintings told the area’s history from before recorded time. We learned there are prehistoric cave paintings and carvings similar to the Lascaux caves we had just visited in France.
The kingdoms of England, France, Castille and Navarre tussled over the area for centuries. Intricate political machinations, and marriages between their princes and princesses were negotiated to achieve accords and power.
I came upon old drawings and maps of the Isla de los Faisanes – such an intriguing island. We had recently passed by it twice going to and from Tours, France. Set in the Bidesoa River, which forms the border between present-day Irun, Spain and Hendaye, France, the island is today governed six months of the year by Spain (Feb. 1 to July 31) and the other six months (Aug. 1 to Jan. 31) by France. Wild!
Since the 1600s, important meetings and negotiations had been held on the island, as well as hostage exchanges and handing over princesses for royal marriages (another form of hostage exchange, I would argue).
An old drawing depicted the Isla de los Faisanes (Spanish), aka Île des Faisans (French), Pheasant Island (English), and Konpantzia (Basque).
One of the most important events was the 1659 signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees, which took 24 meetings to hammer out, including the negotiations for French King Louis XIV’s engagement to Spanish Princess Maria Theresa. Their engagement ratified the treaty and ended the Thirty Years’ War. The treaty also set out the joint ownership of the island, which continues. Cool.
I peered closely at the drawings and maps. Today, the island is tree-covered and uninhabited, but the drawings showed covered bridges to both sides of the island. Most of the land was occupied by wooden buildings. I guess those negotiators had to sleep over.
The Basques explored the New World, hunting whales and fishing for cod off Newfoundland (now in Canada) from as early as 1525. The town of Port aux Basques in Newfoundland reflects their influence.
The museum’s upper floors described Basque sports, music, dance, myths, beliefs, games, and festivals. Euskara – the oldest language in Europe – even survived the arrival of Romans with their Latin declensions. Today, about one million people speak Euskara.
Jai alai looked interesting – a lot like lacrosse. Certainly, the curved basket-like thingy used to catch and quickly throw the ball seemed similar. Players can fire the small, hard ball, called a pelota, at speeds of up to 250 kilometres per hour! Injuries are apparently common. No kidding!
We had passed by the Gernika jai alai court, which is the biggest and said to be the finest in the world. It looked enormous from the street. I’d read the posters, but there hadn’t seemed to be any games scheduled when we were there.
More places to visit
Before leaving Gernika, I took the escalator up the not-so-steep street (while Bill teased me; why is this escalator even needed?) to see the tile re-creation of Picasso’s painting once again.
Since we were on a road trip with an agenda, we didn’t have time for the rest of Gernika’s interesting features, especially the Peace Museum.
It’s rather sad that we need a museum to “explain why a culture of peace is needed in the world today,” as the website said, but the museum also sets the history of Gernika within that context. People who lived through the bombing tell their stories. The museum also examines human rights in the world today, asks what “peace” really means, and suggests that it’s more the end of conflict. All of which sounds constructive.
On another visit, I would walk the entire Bombing Route, examine other air raid shelters, see a jai alai game, and shop at the Monday Market. The bombing had taken place on a Monday and, ever since, the Monday Market has been a symbol of Basque defiance.
If dark tourism is a spectrum ranging from worthy and educational to disrespectful voyeurism, Gernika sits squarely on the worthy end.
We visited Gernika in June 2026. Find out where we are right now by visiting our ‘Where’s Kathryn?’ page.
