Masked, gloved, and gowned, ready to respond to the commands of Captain Cortés, a tired Teresa Ortuz unexpectedly found herself assisting during the first surgery of the day. At 5:30 A.M. the nurse who normally took the early-morning session with Cortés had reported sick. Mother Augusta asked Teresa, due to go off duty at 6:00, to stand in.
The walls and ceiling of the operating room were draped with white sheeting, its floor covered with several layers of sacking in an attempt at asepsis. Twin tables stood a few feet apart, their white oilskin surfaces glistening under a 300-watt scialitic light on a stand that could be wheeled from one table to another. This arrangement allowed Captain Cortés to begin a new operation while his assistant finished up the previous case.
As usual, all Teresa could see of Cortés was a pair of red-rimmed eyes above his surgical mask. He expelled overwhelming odors of garlic and wine with each grunt he gave as he explored the man’s damaged areas. The spleen had been smashed, there was a constant flow of blood caused by a large hematoma. Unable to locate the source of the bleeding, Cortés delicately moved to one side the colon with its peritoneum and vessels still attached.
Standing across the table, her head bent close to Cortés, Teresa was repelled by his breath. She inched back from the table. He looked up at her sharply. She edged forward again as Cortés turned once more to the man on the table.
The anesthetist reported the patient’s blood pressure was falling.
Working calmly and quickly, Cortés made exploratory incisions through the posterior peritoneum. He told Teresa to monitor the flow of plasma; too quick a transfusion would be fatal.
She checked the bottle of blood on its stand at the foot of the table and adjusted the flow. Then she returned to her position.
The anesthetist reported the patient’s blood pressure was dangerously low. The respirator bag was barely inflating.
Cortés continued to probe. Suddenly a fountain of blood frothed upward. He had dislodged a metal fragment deep in the gut. He attempted to halt the hemorrhaging by applying tamponage and manual pressure. As the spuming subsided, he bent over the patient, listening intently. After a moment he told Teresa to stop transfusing. The man was dead.
The anesthetist disconnected his apparatus from the body and moved to the adjoining table to prepare for the next patient.
As Teresa began to gather together the instruments that would be needed, Cortés asked her why she had moved away from the table during the operation. When she told him, he seemed taken aback. He asked why, in all the months they had worked together, she had not raised the matter before. There was a mocking note in his voice that Teresa found distasteful, but another of her “tests” was not to overreact in such situations.
He pressed her for an answer. She sidestepped the question, saying that it might be best if she asked for a transfer to other duties. But Cortés “just stared at me and laughed. Then he said he would take more care in the future with what he ate and drank when I was working with him.”
In speaking out, Teresa recognized for the first time her own importance to Cortés as a member of the surgical team. In the nine months they had worked together, there had been little cause for him to find fault; she had been quick to learn his ways, anticipating every cut, clamp, and stitch he made. In that time she had also witnessed many examples of his quick temper toward other nurses. He had once thrown a kidney tray at one who had laid out the wrong box of instruments for an operation. That nurse never came near the operating room again.
Now Teresa helped him wheel the scialitic stand light across to the next table. She waited while he studied the patient, naked, harshly lit by the lamp, stomach colored with red dye around the torn flesh. She could see the fear in the soldier’s eyes as he watched orderlies remove the body from the other table.
Cortés took the young man’s hand and talked reassuringly until the anesthetist’s mask covered the patient’s face. Then he set to work.
Rufino Unceta, the fifty-one-year-old owner of the Astra-Unceta arms factory, maker of Spain’s most famous pistol as well as submachine guns and rifles, quietly pushed open the shutters of his bedroom window and walked out onto the balcony. The bells of the Church of Santa María tolled five-thirty.
In more peaceful days the sound would have reminded him to cross himself and offer a prayer for all the blessings he had received: a good wife, five handsome children, success in business. Today his mind was busy with the thought that this might be the last day his factory would be occupied, and that at last he might end the dangerous double life he had been forced to lead since the war broke out.
He scanned the hills around Monte San Miguel, anxious for any sign to confirm his hopes. Nothing stirred. But after the long months of waiting, he knew the end was approaching. The Nationalist troops were out there, in the hills, and in this Republican town Rufino Unceta and his family were among the few who longed for them to arrive.
It was a feeling he could share only with his family and closest friends. Only they knew how deep ran his pro-Franco feelings. And they were glad that the wealthiest and most powerful of Guernica’s seven thousand citizens supported the Nationalists, because they believed Franco would now repay that loyalty by sparing the town.
Rufino Unceta knew just one man who could destroy his hope. If Lieutenant Gandaría even suspected how passionately he supported the Nationalist cause, Gandaría would kill him. And then, Unceta reasoned, there would be no reason for Franco to spare the town.
If anything, the war had increased Unceta’s standing with the townspeople. He had given generously to support widows and orphans; he had built a massive air-raid shelter for his workers. His fellow Guernicans viewed these acts as signs of opposition to the Nationalist threat to Basque independence. Unceta was content that people should think he was sympathetic to the Republican cause; it was not a time “to make noble, pointless gestures. Running up a flag for Franco,” he had told his family, was “the quickest way to the firing squad.”
To those few who dared press him for a political opinion, as Lieutenant Gandaría had done, Unceta had one stock answer: “Business and politics do not mix. I am a businessman.”
Ever since his father had handed him the business twenty-four years ago, Unceta had cultivated a deliberate aloofness from the daily life of Guernica. It was his father who had first seen the potential of Guernica, close to the steel mills of Bilbao, situated on a river and railway. But it was he who had planned the impressive factory as the first step toward establishing an industrial dynasty.
Rufino had persuaded the municipal authorities to sell him the factory site for “a few pesetas.” In turn he had promised to raise the town’s standard of living and to attract other business. That had been in 1913, when Guernica had had no bank and only a few cafés and taverns set among architecture going back five centuries. Within a year Unceta had convinced the Bank of Vizcaya to open a branch in the town, offering his company account as an incentive. The railway was cajoled into increasing its services after he gave them the exclusive right to freight his guns to Bilbao. Finally a hotel, the Julián, had opened to cater to the increasing number of arms buyers who came to Guernica.
From his bedroom balcony, Unceta could see a large part of the old town, which had been burned and sacked several times in its six hundred years. In its streets worked tailors, shawl makers, pot menders, purveyors of lotions and potions, and a dozen other ancient crafts. From dawn to dusk the district sounded its voice in argument, anger, and laughter; shrill and continuous, ebbing and flowing amidst the creak and squeal of ox-cart wheels.
Rufino Unceta felt a sense of history about Guernica. Its three convents, one monastery, and two churches marked the town as an important religious center. The pilgrims of the Middle Ages had come to Guernica to lecture about their travels; some were buried in the local cemetery. Later, Guernica became the place where the coach from San Sebastián stopped to change horses before continuing to Bilbao. Shipowners once recruited local youths to crew their voyages of discovery; it was said Christopher Columbus took with him to America deckhands from Guernica.
The town had grown and long ago gobbled up the small boatyards along the Mundaca. Now there were apartment houses in their place, and a candy factory near the Rentería Bridge provided work for nearly fifty townspeople, mostly young women. The industrial zone at the other end of the town contained the Astra-Unceta complex and the now-empty Talleres de Guernica factory. Beyond the zone were fields where medieval knights were supposed to have jousted; little boys still combed the area for spearheads.
Unceta himself had become a local legend following that day in 1914 when the Spanish government had asked him to design a new Army pistol. It was a modest contract for a thousand weapons, but it marked the beginning of Unceta’s connection with governments, monarchs, and heads of state throughout the world. As Spain’s pistol maker, Unceta had promised King Alfonso XIII he would never sell a gun “which might be turned against Spain, or used by Spaniards to kill Spaniards.” His promise held true until the Civil War.
Then, Rufino Unceta had privately pledged his loyalty to Franco. He believed the general could save Spain from communism, and that the Basque country should remain part of a united Spain.
But promptly at 7:00 A.M. on the morning of July 28, 1936, Republican troops had arrived at Unceta’s home. An officer had politely requested he accompany him to the factory. When Unceta refused, the officer had replied that if he persisted he would be shot on his doorstep.
The walk to the factory had given Unceta time to compose himself. By the time he reached his office he had come to a decision. He informed the officer: “I am, above all, in business. Business has nothing to do with politics. Accordingly, I will meet any reasonable demand that comes within that framework.”
In the following months his factory had made thousands of weapons for the Republican Army. An appalled Unceta could do nothing.
Lieutenant Gandaría had arrived on the day Mola launched his northern offensive. The young officer was at first coldly polite, but he insisted on one production increase after another. Unceta had been secretly impressed, yet frightened, to discover one day that Gandaría had been painstakingly learning the intricacies of gun-making. With a tight smile, the officer had told him, “Soon, I will know if this place is working to full capacity. For your sake I hope it is.”
Throughout the occupation of his factory, Unceta had maintained one sound business principle: He insisted on full payment for everything. By Friday, April 23, 1937, just two days ago, the factory had produced 11,658 pistols and machine guns and received 1,116,000 pesetas from Republican coffers.
Recently, Unceta had noticed increasing anxiety among the troops guarding the factory. Then he had learned from Gandaría that the plant was to be shipped to Bilbao. Unceta had immediately begun plotting to block the move. He had protested there were no workers in Bilbao capable of operating the machines. His objection had been brushed aside. Then, with a flair for technology that baffled Gandaría, Unceta had argued it would be impossible to dismantle and reassemble the equipment without specialist help. The nearest experts were in Madrid, a city now separated from Guernica by hundreds of miles of Nationalist-occupied territory.
Lieutenant Gandaría had left Unceta’s office angrily. On April 21 he had reappeared, smiling triumphantly. Russian experts would arrive in Guernica on the morning of Tuesday, April 27, to supervise the dismantling.
That was still two days away. As if in answer to the prayers of the man standing on the bedroom balcony, there came a rumble of artillery fire from the hills. Rufino Unceta hurried into the bedroom and shook his wife. “Wake up,” he whispered to her, “Franco’s on our doorstep.”
From his office window Von Richthofen watched the pilot of the reconnaissance plane settle himself in the high-backed bucket seat. For a moment longer, nothing disturbed the quiet of the airfield. Then, at 7:30 A.M. precisely, as it had every morning of this war in the north, the plane’s starter motor whined. Blue flame escaped from the exhaust, followed by a roar as the propeller blades spun. The aircraft rocked on its tires, straining against the wheel blocks.
In his mind Von Richthofen ran through the checks the pilot would be making. Flaps up, mags on, undercarriage locked, full fuel, instrument checks. Chocks removed, brakes released, the HE-45 taxied to the end of the runway, then roared across the grass and was airborne.
Von Richthofen hoped the reconnaissance pilot would return with information to confirm what he had read earlier in the Daily Intelligence Summary. When the Heinkel disappeared over the nearest mountain, he gathered into a canvas bag the reports and maps on his desk. Then, at his usual high speed, he drove back to operations headquarters at the Frontón Hotel.
His route took him past the newly painted villa housing the Legion’s officially approved brothel. Girls had been recruited from all over Spain to staff its twenty bedrooms. A corporal–“old enough not to take advantage”—watched over them. Weekly, the Legion’s medical officer checked the girls for venereal disease.
Von Richthofen tolerated the brothel as the most efficient way of controlling syphilis and gonorrhea. Doubtless he would have been surprised had he known that when the Legion had moved from the previous base to Vitoria, the girls had been airlifted along with all the other equipment.
On the veranda of the Frontón Hotel a number of young officers breakfasted. Most were about twenty-two years old, many from aristocratic backgrounds. Indeed, the leader of the second squadron of the heavy Junkers-52 bombers, Baron von Beust, had the same senior hereditary title, Freiherr, as Von Richthofen.
He paused for a moment as they read out items from week-old German newspapers, checked the financial columns for their stocks, and indulged in the latest gossip. The chief of staff had no time for such talk. His only concern was that the young fliers justify the trust placed in them and acquire the expertise necessary to fight the Reich’s “inevitable enemy, the Bolshevists.”
Von Richthofen’s sojourn in Spain had strengthened his view that ultimately Germany must fight Russia. They were, he told his men, already at war with “the Reds” here in Spain. Virtually to a man, the personnel of the Condor Legion believed they had come to Spain to stop the spread of communism. Few, if any, of Von Richthofen’s pilots knew that the Basque country was not Communist-oriented; although some were Communists, the majority of Basques were motivated to fight by a desire for separatism.
Von Richthofen nodded curtly to the men on the veranda, hurried into the hotel and up to his suite. There he took down his flute, sat on the edge of the bed, and began to play. He played well. Then, refreshed by his break, he went to the operations room to continue what he was even better at: waging war.
A small group of exhausted men flopped down on the pine-needle carpet of the forest. Above them the wind tugged at the treetops; below in the distance they could make out the road from Durango to Amorebieta. In recent days traffic along the road had been mainly one way—westward, toward Bilbao and away from the advancing Nationalists.
Now the road was empty. The last of the carts carrying household goods and crated livestock had passed by; so had the columns of refugees who had survived the air attacks on Durango.
The Nationalists, supported by the Condor Legion and heavy artillery bombardment, had swept into the mountains north, south, and east of the town. Farther south, in the village of Ochandiano, the Republican stand had broken after fifty planes of the Condor Legion had attacked the village in a daylong raid. Fearful of encirclement, the Republicans had withdrawn, leaving an estimated six hundred dead and four hundred wounded.
Under cover of the heavy rain that had then grounded the Condor Legion, the Basques had force-marched deeper into the mountains, scattering into small units in an attempt to avoid detection.
It was one of those units that now rested on the slopes of Monte Oiz, north of Durango. Wearing mud-spattered dark-gray trousers and rope-soled shoes, the men could be recognized as members of the Eighteenth Loyola Battalion only by the insignia on their jackets. Until a few months ago most of them had never left Bilbao. Now their battalion headquarters was in Guernica.
Their unit commander, Lieutenant Juan Dominguiz, studied the surrounding countryside. Then he focused his binoculars on a small road that led north to Marquina. Though little more than a dirt track, it appeared inviting to soldiers whose legs ached from trekking through the mountains. But for the moment, Dominguiz was content to let his men lie in the forest and watch the clouds scurrying in the sky.
For nearly a month now, the tall, striking Dominguiz and his men had been fighting a rearguard action. Their retreat had begun when they were ordered out of Durango shortly before the Condor Legion bombed the town on March 31. From a hillside vantage point, Dominguiz had watched the air attack. Afterward, in a notebook he carried in his map pouch, he had jotted his observations: “Durango was bombed and machine-gunned indiscriminately. It is a terrible example of the destruction that can befall all our homeland. It gives good reason why we must resist.”
Dominguiz was the eldest son of fairly prosperous parents. They owned a men’s clothes shop in Bilbao, regularly attended Mass in the city’s cathedral, and encouraged their son in his aspirations to become a journalist. In January 1935, he had taken a position on the staff of a Bilbao newspaper.
Soon he began to take an interest in Basque affairs. He became an active campaigner for separatism, epitomized by the slogan: “Basque Government for the Basques, by the Basques.” In the general call to arms, Dominguiz had volunteered. His education and a natural aptitude for leadership had earned him his officer’s pips.
In October 1936, Dominguiz was posted to the Loyola Battalion headquarters in Guernica. There he met and fell in love with an attractive local girl, Carmen Batzar. The bitterness Dominguiz felt toward the enemy was expressed in a letter he had written to Carmen following the first air attack on Durango:
It is disgusting the way our generation on both sides is being systematically destroyed while the real power is in foreign hands. There is a sinister and yet uncompleted phase: the invasion of our country by the Italians and Germans. Do they not realize we are not Communists? Do they not realize we are not even Spanish, but Basque? They have come at the bidding of Franco, that part of the Church loyal to him, and the landowners who are jealous of our industrial wealth here in Euzkadi [the Basque region]. And because we refuse to join Franco by betraying the constitutional government of Spain, he is allowing particularly cruel reprisals to be exacted against us. There have been many examples of how the Germans, the Moors, the Italians are all doing Franco’s bidding—and all that carried on under the blessing of the Nonintervention Pact. How can England, France, America, any country, justify such an agreement when it is being so clearly ignored by Hitler and Mussolini in order to butcher us?
Now Dominguiz lowered his military map to the forest floor and examined it carefully. He knew there were Nationalist troops very close. Although the route through the mountains would be hard for his tired men, there was no real choice.
Dominguiz decided to let the soldiers rest a little longer. He took the opportunity to write in his notebook a thought that had worried him for some days: When would the Republican International Brigades come to the aid of the Basques? Their exploits in the defense of Madrid were known around the world. With their help the Italian advance at Guadalajara had been turned into an ignominious rout, a blow to Franco and Mussolini. That had happened a month before. Dominguiz noted: “If only the French, American, and British International Brigades were here, everything would be different.”
His writing was interrupted by the sound of an aircraft engine. With a high, hammering noise, the Heinkel reconnaissance plane flew close to where the men lay hidden. They did not move until it had passed well clear of Monte Oiz.
Dominguiz refolded his map and ordered his troops to continue their trek through the mountains. They would follow the road to Marquina. They might be lucky enough to get a lift. In that way Dominguiz hoped they might still reach their headquarters, the Convent of La Merced in Guernica, by nightfall. There he would be given new orders, perhaps equipment to replace that lost in the retreat from Ochandiano.
But what really excited the young officer was the knowledge that Carmen would be waiting for him. Weeks before, when they were last together, they had chosen the date for their wedding in Guernica’s Church of Santa María. Now, April 30 was just five days away.
Father José Domingo de Iturran was the parish priest of the Church of Santa María. But on this Sunday morning he was in no way concerned about a future wedding. His mind was occupied with thoughts that had troubled him for weeks.
In the gloom of the church, he rose from his morning devotions in the side chapel of Our Lady of Begonia. At sixty-one, the tall, stooped priest could look back on nearly a quarter of a century in Guernica.
During the early period he had kept loneliness at bay by nurturing his interest in history—he had even kept a diary—and by maintaining his scholarly pursuits. But he had made no real contact with the townspeople. He had had a secret hope of higher office, of perhaps one day working in the Bishop’s Palace in Bilbao. But as time passed, he had realized he would probably end his living in the Church as he had begun—a parish priest.
The acceptance had changed him. Soon he became a popular figure in the town’s life; his influence was felt in many quarters and his advice was sought on almost every kind of problem. His standing in the community was now paramount, and Father Iturran was aware of the responsibility it gave him.
For this very reason, until now he had not spoken publicly about the war.
Privately, he was sure that Franco would eventually win. The belief gave the priest no pleasure; he thought many of the Nationalists no better than “barbarians.” But for him to say as much publicly would bring him into the conflict that already divided the Church in northern Spain. On August 6, 1936, the bishops of Vitoria and Pamplona had broadcast a pastoral letter to “roundly condemn the adhesion of Basque Catholics to the Republican side. Theologically it is not allowed, non licet, for Basque Catholics to make common cause with the Republicans.”
The vicar-general of Bilbao had rejected the pastoral letter on a number of grounds: It might be a forgery; it had not been promulgated with “due formality”; it might have been written under coercion. Further, certain papal encyclicals were interpreted to mean that the sort of rebellion proclaimed by the Nationalists could never be legal. From then on, many Basque priests openly endorsed the Republican cause.
Father Iturran preferred to wait for clear-cut guidance from Pope Pius XI. But as the Vatican remained silent, doubts crept into Father Iturran’s mind. He wondered if, after all, the young parish priest of the town’s other church, San Juan, was right. When they last had met, Father Eusebio de Arronategui had angrily argued that “the Vatican regards us as unworthy of concern. Rome has declared for Franco because everyone else is regarded as Communist.”
Father Iturran was shocked by such talk. Yet all over Nationalist-occupied Spain, bishops, canons, and priests offered prayers for a Nationalist victory. Some priests actually fought with the armed forces; the parish priest of the village of Zafra was said to have buried alive four Republican militiamen and a wounded girl in graves that they themselves had been forced to dig.
Father Iturran agonized in private. In his presbytery, he used colored pencils to mark the changing fronts on a map. By April 1937, it showed that, apart from the isolated area facing the Bay of Biscay that included the Basque country, the Nationalists controlled all of Spain west of a line north from Granada to Badajoz, to Toledo, through Guadalajara, and on up to the French border; almost two-thirds of the country.
Now, as Father Iturran leaned back in his chair and looked at that map pinned to the wall, he remembered the enthronement of the boy-king, Alfonso XIII, in 1902, and his abdication into exile twenty-nine years later, leaving Spain a republic. During the next five years Spain had slipped inexorably into chaos. Father Iturran could recall word for word the end of a speech made by the leader of the Catholic Party on July 16, 1936:
“A country can live under a monarchy or a republic. It can live under a parliamentary or a presidential system. It can live under communism or fascism. But it cannot live in anarchy. Now, alas, Spain is in anarchy. And we are today present at the funeral service of democracy.”
The Civil War had broken out the next day.
Father Iturran knew from the newspapers that among the Nationalist forces now outside Guernica were Italian and German troops. He wondered whether the German planes had brought to the north the Moors now also approaching the town.
The thought of the Moors horrified him. Like everyone else, he had heard reports of their barbarous behavior. Many of the stories he presumed to be exaggerated. But in the last few days he had heard from the town’s doctors that they were having to treat an increasing number of women refugees who had been violated.
Among Father Iturran’s many duties was that of spiritual adviser to the local public school’s five hundred pupils. Half of them were girls. If they remained in Guernica, they faced great danger. But how could he tell over two hundred young girls they might soon be raped?
Father Iturran left the presbytery and walked back up the steps and into his church. He had made his decision. He would speak out, regardless of the pain it would cause him.
Juan Silliaco looked at his young son, still asleep at nine o’clock, and also came to an agonizing decision. He would break the news to the boy at breakfast. It would not be easy for either of them.
Silliaco had recently heard many tales that the Moors were pederasts who raped and murdered young boys. And the latest rumor he had heard was that the Moors would be in Guernica within a week. The thought that twelve-year-old Pedro might be in danger of sexual assault from the Moors gave him nightmares. Silliaco determined that his son must leave Guernica.
The boy was stirring. Back in October, Pedro had been one of the lookouts during an occasion of historic importance, when the Basque leaders, the Procuradores, dressed in their morning suits and wing collars and top hats, had walked in solemn procession to Guernica’s famous Parliament Building, unused for fifty years. Inside, Father Iturran had conducted a religious service. Within the circular debating chamber they had all prayed for divine guidance, and had then elected as their president José Antonio de Aguirre.
Aguirre had led the dignitaries outside. Under the revered oak tree, he had then recited in the Basque language: “Humble before God, on Basque soil, standing in memory of our ancestors, under the tree of Guernica, I swear faithfully to fulfill my trust.”
The Basque statute of autonomy gave the president the right to choose his own cabinet. Aguirre’s was a mixture of Basque Nationalists, Socialists, and one Communist. All were considered moderate Republicans; apart from the Communist, all were devoutly religious.
After the service, Juan Silliaco had met his son and with him hurried home to tell his wife the news. He had found her in bed, wan and shivering. A doctor had diagnosed acute pneumonia. Two days later she had died.
Now he prepared to part with his son. The boy could travel to Bilbao by the special bus that had taken children from Guernica to the Basque capital each morning for the past week. It would mean he would have to live alone. He himself could not vacate his responsibility in the town’s fire brigade.
As Pedro opened his eyes, his father smiled. He had, he told him, something to discuss.
Carmen Batzar was ensuring that the chapel altar in the Convent of Santa Clara would have the most elaborate floral decorations in all Guernica, just as she had done every Sunday for months. The convent was in the group of buildings on Guernica’s western slopes that included the Parliament Building and its oak, the handsome mansion of the count of Montefuerte, and the Church of Santa María, where in five days Father Iturran would marry Carmen and Juan Dominguiz.
For a hundred years members of the Batzar family had decorated this altar, but none had ever shown as much loving care as this comely, copper-haired nineteen-year-old. Earlier, in the cool dawn, she had walked through the fields, picking wild flowers. Then, her arms full, Carmen had entered the chapel, the only part of the convent open to the outside world.
The twenty-nine nuns who lived in the cloisters behind the chapel were Sisters of Penance of the Order of Santa Clara, the strictest of all the religious enclaves in Guernica. Founded in 1221, the order had settled in the town in 1422. In 1618 it had become a closed order, and from that moment the sisters had never stepped outside the building.
Carmen had seen them pass their shopping lists through a small, grilled peephole in the convent door. Tradesmen later left the goods outside the door and were paid through the same peephole. Even death did not free the sisters; generations of them were buried in a cemetery inside the convent walls. Each new nun was given a number belonging to a sister who had died. For five centuries the numbers had rotated as they were reassigned for the life span of one nun after another.
That was one of the more unusual rituals Carmen had learned about during her regular visits to dress the altar. Unfailingly, when she finished, from behind the grilled door a nun’s voice would thank her. Over the months Carmen had come to distinguish the voices. She had become friendly with several of the sisters whom she could hear but could not see, and they had patiently answered her questions about their way of life. At the end of each discussion, through the grille, a forefinger would gently trace the sign of the cross on Carmen’s forehead.
During these talks with the sisters, Carmen had also confided the exciting milestones in her life: her successes at school, her first job, and more recently, her engagement to a dashing young officer. The nuns seemed to know nothing about the war, and once when Carmen had told one of them of a Basque victory she had heard about on Radio Bilbao, the sister had gently changed the subject.
Six Sundays ago one of the older nuns had suggested that if Carmen were agreeable, the convent would help make her wedding dress. She had eagerly accepted the offer, for the Sisters of Penance were famed for their needlework.
Carmen chose a bolt of white brocade from the haberdashery where she worked. The following Sunday she left it outside the grilled door with a note of her measurements. Three Sundays ago, after decorating the altar, she had been directed to a private anteroom at the rear of the convent. Set in one of its walls was a long drawer with two shiny brass handles. From behind the wall a muffled voice had told her to pull out the drawer. Carmen had done as she was told. In the drawer was her pinned-together dress with instructions to take it away for a fitting. Carmen’s mother had made some adjustments, and the bride-to-be had then returned the dress to the drawer. She had watched, fascinated, as the drawer disappeared into the wall. It reminded her of what she had been told by one of the nuns: Unwanted babies were sometimes left in the drawer. They were brought up by the sisters, who had no way of knowing who the children’s mothers were. Later they were taken in by an orphanage.
Now Carmen was again alone in the anteroom. She crossed hesitantly to the drawer, and without speaking, drew it open. There, as promised, was her wedding gown, complete with veil. She carefully placed them over her arm and shut the drawer. She knocked on the wall, but there was no response, no one to thank.
A little uneasy, she left the anteroom. Once outside, she turned to thoughts of her fiancé. Carmen could hardly wait until Thursday, when Lieutenant Dominguiz was due to get his leave of absence for the wedding.
The operations room of the Condor Legion was in the lounge of the Frontón Hotel at Vitoria. Leather-covered sofas and armchairs had been augmented by trestle tables; wall prints replaced by maps and charts. The curtains were permanently drawn and on a door was stenciled: ENTRY FORBIDDEN TO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL.
Captain Klaus Gautlitz, the thin-faced, round-shouldered operations officer, had posted the notice in an attempt to reduce the number of people who visited the operations room, but nothing could stop the young fliers who wanted to watch the nerve center of the Legion at work.
Lieutenant Hans Asmus, a twenty-three-year-old pilot who had been transferred to operations, understood the fascination the room had for the airmen. It reminded him of a classroom back in his old school in Hamburg. There was a blackboard on an easel alongside a dais and desk. Gautlitz had sat behind that desk since nine o’clock this Sunday morning.
Asmus and the other assistant operations officer, Lieutenant Heinz Raunce, were seated at one end of a long trestle table that ran the length of the room. Every inch of its surface was crammed with papers that aides were continually updating: weather maps, operations orders, intelligence summaries, instructions about payloads and servicing—everything the men in the room needed to know to wage war.
Among the papers pinned to a bulletin board was an order signed by Von Richthofen on March 31, 1937, the day Durango was first bombed. It reminded “all concerned” that although the Legion would only attack military targets, it should do so “without regard for the civilian population.”
Nearby hung a thick wad of papers listing the daily expenditure of bombs and machine-gun bullets since the campaign in the north had begun. During the first twenty-four hours, 70 tons of bombs had been dropped and 35,350 rounds of ammunition fired. After that, the rate had increased. But the chief of staff was outspoken in his criticism of the slowness of Mola’s troops to advance. He had told one of his officers: “This large expenditure is out of proportion to the ground gains.”
There was also a memo reminding squadron leaders to brief their pilots on the “golden rule” of bombing. If, for any reason, the original target could not be attacked—because of poor weather or smoke hiding the target area—the bombs were to be dropped “blind,” anywhere over enemy territory, again “without regard for the civilian population.”
At the far end of the room Von Richthofen sipped coffee and studied the aerial photographs the early-morning Heinkel reconnaissance flight had taken. Clearly visible in the pictures were Republican troops on the roads around the small town of Marquina, east of Guernica.
Scooping up the prints, Von Richthofen walked briskly to Gautlitz’s desk. The two men studied them. The operations officer called an aide to bring an expanded map of the area. Von Richthofen jabbed his finger at the three roads leading into Marquina. “Here, here, and here,” he said.
The wall clock showed 9:30 A.M. Lieutenant Raunce logged the time in the DOR, the Daily Operations Register, which recorded the orders the Legion received and the missions they carried out.
Lieutenant Asmus and the meteorological officer joined Von Richthofen and Gautlitz. They all moved to the weather map pinned to the blackboard. In a few sentences the met officer explained the map’s squiggles and lines: The weather favored attack.
In a knot, the group then moved to the central trestle table to study copies of the Daily Intelligence Summary the Spanish had provided. This moment always reminded Asmus of a film he had once seen in which a group of doctors had gathered around to discuss a particularly difficult diagnosis.
Von Richthofen asked Gautlitz a one-word question: “Availability?”
The operations officer reported the Legion was almost at full strength. Eighty bombers and fighters were awaiting command.
“Use the three squadrons of Junkers with strong fighter support,” ordered Von Richthofen. “Save the Stukas and the experimental squadrons for later, perhaps Bilbao.”
Lieutenant Raunce entered the decision in the DOR.
The last question to be settled was the bomb mix, the calculated balance between high-explosive, incendiary, and antipersonnel splinter bombs.
Von Richthofen glanced briefly at the papers on the table. The aerial reconnaissance photographs showed no antiaircraft guns with the retreating enemy; indeed, the troops appeared to have no heavy artillery at all. In a precise voice Von Richthofen gave his orders. There would be no incendiaries. The first squadron of nine Junkers-52 bombers would carry 500-pound bombs for blocking the roads. The remaining bombers would use an equal mix of 100-pound explosive bombs and 20-pound antipersonnel bombs, capable of shredding a man to pieces at thirty yards.
To achieve maximum effect, the bomber squadrons were to attack at twenty-minute intervals; each subsequent wave would compound the damage caused by preceding formations. During the intervals, the Legion’s fighter planes would carry out their usual strafing of the enemy troops, pinning them down for the bombers to hit again.
Raunce entered the bomb mix in the DOR.
Von Richthofen had one further instruction: “Tell the fighter pilots to take along a few hand grenades for dropping over the side.”
Gautlitz nodded.
“And tell everyone to attack anything that moves on the roads around Marquina.”
With that, the Legion’s chief of staff left the room.
By the time he was through the door, Asmus was on the telephone to the bomber base at Burgos. There, awaiting instructions, was the Condor Legion’s wing commander, Major Klaus Fuchs.
With his usual enthusiasm, Asmus dictated the orders. It would be another action in a campaign he considered “viel Spass,” a real picnic.
Teresa Ortuz, near exhaustion, had been on duty for twelve hours, the last four in the operating room, and had not eaten since leaving home the night before. On an empty stomach, the smell of ether combined with fumes from Captain Cortés was sickening. Mechanically, she passed scalpels, hemostats, and needles in the sequence the surgeon required.
Once, she dropped some scissors. Cortés glanced at her irritably but said nothing. Then, toward the end of the operation, his bloodshot eyes signaled emergency. The patient was hemorrhaging. While he fought to control the bleeding, he shouted at Teresa to give a transfusion.
Normally he would have done that. Now there was no time. Teresa worked the transfusion needle into the patient’s arm vein, trying to keep her own hand steady.
The anesthetist monitored heartbeat and color changes in the patient’s face. Teresa watched the blood begin to flow, acknowledged the anesthetist’s nod, and returned to her place opposite the surgeon. She reached for the needle tray; thicker needles for deep sutures were on one side, finer ones for veins on the other. Both types had been threaded with catgut.
The surgeon called out and she handed him a needle, her scissors ready in the other hand. As he stitched and tied, she snipped and obeyed his calls for needles. Stitch, tie, snip, call; stitch, tie, snip, call; it was part of the orchestrated precision of the operating room that she had come to like so much.
Finally, the skin was sutured, the area dressed. Captain Cortés straightened up with a satisfied grunt. “He’ll live.”
He looked at Teresa and realized how tired she was. “You’re no good to me or anyone else in that state,” he said. “Go and get some rest.”
Without waiting for an answer, he walked out. Teresa had never before heard him express concern of any kind for his staff. The anesthetist shrugged.
Normally, by ten on a Sunday morning. Teresa would have had a few hours’ sleep at the end of her night shift and would be preparing to go to Santa María Church.
This morning she was far too tired to attend Mass. Instead, she decided to make her devotions in the convent’s chapel and then go home to sleep. She joined some of the nursing staff, mostly nuns, in their meditation, slipping into a rear pew to offer up her prayers for the salvation of her country.
Afterward she went to the staff common room where nuns and nurses drank coffee at a long refectory table. The only thing in the coffee’s favor, a nurse remarked, was its warmth. But even without milk or sugar, the black liquid helped to revive Teresa.
At the far end of the table, Mother Superior Augusta rose to her feet. She looked around her flock, and it seemed to Teresa that she was “saying a silent prayer that God would guide her.”
Then the Superior spoke. “The Nationalists are close by. Many of you no doubt have heard stories about how some of their troops treat prisoners, especially women. I fear there is some truth in what has been said.”
Still speaking softly, her voice betraying no fear, the Superior warned against panic. “No one, for whatever reason, is to leave her post. Our sole preoccupation must continue to be the welfare of our patients. Even if the enemy actually reaches this convent, this attitude must prevail.”
Teresa marveled that Mother Augusta’s voice remained calm, without inflection. The Superior concluded, “It is the responsibility of us all to show courage and fortitude and make others follow our example. God loves and will take care of us. Whatever happens will be His will.”
Watching the Superior walk from the room, Teresa wondered whether she would ever acquire the same serenity. She felt a flush of admiration for Mother Augusta, for it was said in the convent that the Superior’s two sisters had been raped when the Moors occupied Badajoz in western Spain last August. The thought suddenly made Teresa fear for the safety of her mother and younger sisters. Impulsively, she decided she must persuade them to move to Bilbao. They would not want to go, but she was sure they must.
She pushed back her chair, and without a word to her colleagues, hurried out of the room. In the corridor, she overtook Mother Augusta. The Superior called to her, reminding her this was the Sabbath, that it was unseemly for nurses to rush, and that she should go quietly home to relax, for it “may be the last chance for some time.”
Mother Augusta explained she had received a message from Bilbao designating the convent “a hospital of first urgency.” The war was now less than a two-hour ambulance journey away.
The Superior had another item of news: The Second Basque field surgical unit would arrive in Guernica in a few days. Teresa felt sudden excitement. Her father was one of the unit’s doctors. But she knew, too, that once her mother learned the news, nothing would make her leave the town.
Grim-faced, Lieutenant Ramón Gandaría stood in the communications room of the Eighteenth Loyola Battalion, listening to the voice of the officer at the other end of the field telephone line, fifteen miles away in Marquina.
Gandaría had been awakened after five hours’ sleep to take this call. He timed it at 10:15 A.M., scrawling it in the daily log beside the telephone. Captain Juan de Beiztegi, the battalion’s commanding officer, insisted that proper records be kept of everything that happened while he was away in the field, or as he now was, reporting to the Basque GHQ in Galdacano near Bilbao.
In his absence he had made Gandaría duty officer, effectively responsible for all the other officers and two hundred soldiers garrisoned in the battalion headquarters in the Convent of La Merced on the northeast side of Guernica, just across the Rentería Bridge.
Though the telephone link was poor, Gandaría detected the officer’s dismay as he reported, “We are pulling back.”
Gandaría was shocked. “Does Bilbao know?”
“Yes.”
Gandaría replaced the telephone. A limited retreat could mean only one thing: falling back to a new front.
It was more imperative than ever that the Astra-Unceta arms complex be moved on schedule to Bilbao this coming Tuesday. Once that was done, he could concentrate on his other task: fortifying Guernica.
The two duty clerks looked at him anxiously, their faces pale under the bare lightbulb. There was nothing to show that nuns had once received their visitors in this room; now it was festooned with telephone lines and a portable switchboard. The Spartan furnishings were completed by some old straight-backed chairs and plain wooden tables. The dark-green-painted walls were covered with maps.
Gandaría ordered the telephonist to “Get GHQ.”
While he waited for the call, he studied the largest of the maps. The overall picture looked bleak; the front was moving closer. Still, Gandaría was confident that Bilbao’s “ring of iron” could withstand enemy attack. Within the perimeter was a sizable army. The hilly terrain around Bilbao offered ideal conditions for Republican heavy artillery. From the heights they could slow the Nationalists as they moved forward. Those who got through would be caught at the barbed wire.
The telephone call to GHQ in Galdacano interrupted his thoughts. A colonel told Gandaría that “the situation around Marqina means a new front must be formed before Guernica.” Troops were expected to defend a line east of the town. The Loyola Battalion headquarters would coordinate the defense, and “nothing must obstruct that aim.”
Shaken, Gandaría listened to the colonel’s final words. “The war is coming to you, my friend. Every hour you resist means more time for reinforcements to be called up.”
Gandaría looked at the switchboard telephonist. The soldier had listened in to the conversation. The lieutenant overlooked the offense, saying simply, “So now you know.”
From inside the convent, as if in counterpoint to his words, a score of voices started to sing. Las Mercedarias, the Sisters of Mercy, who had insisted on remaining in their convent even after it was occupied by the battalion on July 28, 1936, were singing Terce, the third Hour of that timeless world they had continued to maintain in their chapel, refectory, and cells. All the other rooms had been taken over by the soldiers, although most were now empty as the troops had gone to the front.
Leaving the communications room, Gandaría wondered how the soldiers still in the convent would feel when they realized the prospect of dying for their country was close. Would they be prepared, as he was, to sacrifice themselves for their beliefs? He hoped so. More than once he had wished his soldiers would display the same single-minded dedication as did the nuns whose singing now grew louder as he walked toward their part of the convent.
Grandaría was fascinated by the life-style of las Mercedarias. He had listened to their prayers and now knew the difference between their exquisite daybreak chant of the Office of Lauds and the intimate way they rendered Compline every night at eight o’clock. He knew, too, the time of Prime, the early-morning blessing of the day ahead; it was followed by Terce, the “third Hour.” Then came Conventional Mass, followed by Sext at midday, the “sixth Hour.” There were no sung prayers at the “ninth Hour,” three o’clock in the afternoon, as this time was for silent meditation to mark the death of Christ. Singing started again with evening Vespers, and the nuns’ day ended with Matins, the quiet prayer for the night. Then came the Great Silence, which no sister would break except in grave emergency.
Once, before the Great Silence had descended, Gandaría had heard the convent’s Superior, Mother María, reminding her flock they were to pray that the soldiers would leave, that God would return the convent to the nuns.
But Gandaría had decided it was the nuns who must now leave.
The decision troubled him. The only truly happy memories he had of childhood were of his schooldays with the nuns in Barcelona; they had been gentle, understanding, and had encouraged him to become a teacher. Instead he had chosen the Army, where he had taken care to conceal the hopes the nuns had once had for him; he believed then that “soldiering and religion had nothing in common.” Instead he had developed a rough, cynical front, relishing the fact that people like Rufino Unceta marked him as a “hard fellow.”
Now, as he opened the stout wooden door into the area where the nuns lived, he was relieved no soldiers were near to see how nervous he was.
Carefully closing the door behind him, he found himself in a dim, flagstoned corridor. He had been here before to listen secretly to the nuns’ chanting. At the far end of the corridor, beyond another door, their singing rose and fell in unison, high and sweet.
He paused in the corridor to let the sound envelop him. Abruptly, it stopped. He walked toward the door, opened it, and entered the chapel.
Ahead of him, kneeling on the cold slab floor, las Mercedarias were praying before the gaunt Christ suspended on the Cross before the altar. Each nun was in the same humble, folded-down position.
He knew there were young and old in the community. But from where he stood, looking at their backs, there was no way of telling their ages, for they had all achieved perfect immobility. Not one spine sagged, no shoulder drooped, no muscle moved to disturb the marblelike folds of their habits.
Lieutenant Gandaría walked toward them. One of the figures rose, genuflected to the altar, and turned to meet him. He thought it uncanny that she had known he was there.
The pinched face of Mother María did nothing to prepare him for her voice. It was remote and lonely and seemed to come from a great distance.
“What do you wish of us?”
“Reverend Mother, the time has come for you all to leave.” The Superior remained silent.
“The convent is no longer safe,” continued Gandaría.
The distant voice came again. “For whom? For you or for us? This has been our home for three hundred years.”
“Reverend Mother, soon there may be fighting. Many more troops will arrive.”
“Where shall we go?”
“Bilbao, Reverend Mother. You will be safe there.”
“We cannot move today.”
“Reverend Mother, you must—”
The Superior silenced him, saying the nuns would leave the following day, after Vespers on Monday evening.
Grateful for her agreement, Gandaría turned to leave.
“Wait!”
He felt her scrutinize his face, looking into his eyes. A warm flush came to his cheeks, as it had years before whenever a teacher had stared at him.
“You are only a child.”
The Superior made the sign of the cross over him and murmured her benediction. Then she turned and rejoined the ranks of kneeling nuns.
To most of the people in Guernica, their forty-six-year-old mayor, José Labauría, was a little-known figure. Though he had now been alcalde for nine months—having replaced the pro-Franco mayor at the beginning of the war—he still kept very much to himself.
Labauría was a former sea captain who had spent most of his life in command of a large fishing ship. On land, he found it difficult to adapt. Rather than mix with the townspeople, he preferred the privacy of his first-floor office in Guernica’s Town Hall. Even this Sunday, before going to church, he was there, sifting through his papers.
He walked across to the balcony and looked down on the Plaza de los Fueros. Children were playing, dressed in their Sunday best. He waved to them; they waved back.
Labauría knew the townspeople did not consider him their real mayor; that honor was still reserved for Severo Altube, an old man who had retired to France. Altube had worn Guernica’s chain of office for five years, leaving in 1935 when the pro-Franco mayor, Amurrio, had taken over.
It was Altube who had first formed, and then coached, the town band of which everyone was so proud. Indeed, it was said that Altube had had no interest in political affairs, that he had cared only about the cultural activities of the town. Perhaps that was the reason his memory lingered on so long after he had gone: The people of Guernica wished everything was as it had been during Altube’s time, before politics had split Spain.
Labauría returned to his papers. It was clear from them that food and fuel were in short supply, and the situation was likely to get worse. One of the town’s councilors who had complained had already been sharply reminded by the mayor that there was a war on. Such deprivations were to be expected, maintained the mayor, and borne stoically. Labauría discounted the opinions of those who predicted that unless Guernica’s refugee population could be substantially reduced, mass hunger would result, and looting. That, he said, was scaremongering.
The air-raid shelters in the town, such as they were, had been built not through any mayoral decree, but out of the initiative of individuals. After the bombing of Durango, residents in some of Guernica’s streets had got together and superficially strengthened the cellars of various houses with sandbags and wooden supports. Their locations in the town became known by word of mouth, and the entrances to most had Refugio scrolled artistically on a piece of cardboard nailed to their doors.
The mayor had, however, given the town clerk permission for the records normally kept in the Town Hall basement to be moved elsewhere, so that the large room could be used as a shelter. Now it stood empty. The ceiling above the eighty-by-sixty-foot area was covered by a double layer of bags filled with sand dredged from the Mundaca estuary. This ceiling, twelve feet high, was supported by strong wooden pillars. It was one of the best-built shelters in the town. The clerk estimated that four hundred people could be crammed into it.
Labauría had permitted the Town Hall’s underground shelter to be constructed because he knew it would be unseen, and so would not remind people of the war he had hoped would never touch his town. But he disapproved strongly of the unsightly refugio that had been constructed aboveground on a nearby street. Apart from its ugliness, he thought it totally unsuitable for the purpose for which it was intended. He had not objected to its construction, however, guessing that if he did, he would be accused of interfering with the safety of his citizens.
The shelter had been erected on Calle Santa María, a narrow street leading up from the town’s center, past the Town Hall, to the Church of Santa María. Now, anyone who walked up Calle Santa María to the church had to pass the grotesque structure nearly blocking the street.
The shelter was made from a series of heavy wooden supports about six feet high, joined by similar beams across the top. Its overall length was about twenty feet. On top of the roof beams were piled sandbags. This incredibly ugly box stood in stark contrast to the elegant buildings on Calle Santa María.
As the war drew closer, José Labauría felt increasingly impotent. The military commanders in the town seldom consulted him, and kept him ignorant of the military situation. If Guernica was to be overrun, he concluded ruefully, he might well be the last to know.
Twenty miles away in Bilbao, the thirty-six-year-old chain-smoking president of the Basque Republic, José Aguirre, knew that José Labauría was not the strong leader Guernica needed. Aguirre, also his government’s minister of defense, was aware that the town was in grave danger. He placed a telephone call to one of his most trusted ministers, Francisco Lazcano, and requested him to proceed urgently to Guernica to “take charge of the town.” Lazcano said he would be there within twenty-four hours.
Baker Antonio Arazamagni checked his fob watch. It was just after 10:30 A.M., time for him to leave Guernina for Marquina. The fruit pastry he had baked earlier this morning for his eighteen-year-old friend was carefully wrapped and placed on the passenger seat of Antonio’s old Ford. The car’s tank was filled with the prewar-priced gasoline, and the garage man had received his first payment, an extra loaf and a pastry.
Antonio decided to take a last look into the shed where he stored his flour. And as he opened the door and entered the shed, he realized at once that he had been robbed. While he was away, someone had stolen a sack of flour, enough for a day’s baking.
Antonio was a victim of the increasing number of thefts in the town. A black market had developed, as yet ill-organized, but for those who could afford it and knew whom to approach, an egg could be purchased at up to twenty times its prewar price, and a kilo of coffee could fetch more than a man earned for three months’ labor.
The young baker guessed the flour would be hoarded by whoever had stolen it, and used for private consumption. Many families in Guernica baked their own bread. And many families in Guernica were hungry.
At the police station, the details of the theft were written down. When Antonio asked whether his flour would be found, the overworked policeman at the desk shrugged. Too many ordinarily law-abiding people were now taking to theft; the most likely suspects, the refugees, were a transient population. Those among them who had committed crimes could be on the way to Bilbao before they were missed. Besides, added the policeman, it was difficult to search and question people who had already suffered so much.
Unhappy with what he had been told, Antonio drove across the Rentería Bridge, and then, just beyond at a junction, took the right-hand road to Marquina, his spirits, at last, rising.
Juan Dominguiz, leading his small group through the mountains with care, occasionally paused and listened to the Nationalist artillery. At times, hearing an approaching shell, he ordered his men to throw themselves facedown on the ground.
Farther back in the mountains, salvos of heavy shells hurtled over their heads. They came from the enemy’s larger guns, capable of stripping a tree of its branches or slicing a man in half.
As they retreated farther from those guns, Dominguiz and his men saw the result of the bombardment: corpses, recently blown apart.
Dominguiz’s men forced their feet to take them away from the intermittent sound of heavy fire. They retreated toward Marquina, the last town of any importance they would see before turning west for Guernica.
Antonio Arazamagni was now also approaching Marqina. He had traveled eight miles since leaving Guernica. As he passed through the hamlet of Múnditibar the road narrowed and climbed through the hills, forcing him to reduce speed. Suddenly, the car began to shudder and swerve. The fruit pastry fell off the seat and broke. Cursing, Antonio pulled to the side of the road.
A front tire was flat.
The operations officer at Condor Legion headquarters in the Frontón Hotel at Vitoria put down the telephone. He had just been told that the bombers at Burgos had taken off; the fighter planes from Vitoria were already in the air. He logged the time: 10:40 A.M.
Guernica, isolated for centuries by the mountains of northern Spain, was the cultural and religious center of the Basque region. (Photo: Authors’ Collection)
The sacred oak tree of Guernica, symbol of Basque independence, bloomed late in 1937—a bad omen, some said. At left is the Basque Parliament Building. (Photo: Studio Pepe)
Guernica’s mayor, José Labauría. Formerly a sea captain, he lacked the administrative skills to deal with the war’s civilian problems. (Photo: Authors’ Collection)
The Town Hall and its plaza. Mayor Labauría allowed the records normally stored in the basement to be moved so that an air-raid shelter, or refugio, could be prepared. (Photo: Studio Pepe)
The Convent of La Merced. Since the outbreak of the Civil War, it had been used as a Basque garrison headquarters; soldiers and nuns lived uneasily under the same roof. (Photo: Sister Auxilo De María Alcíbar)
Father Eusebio Arronategui, the twenty-seven-year-old parish priest of the Church of San Juan. On the Sunday before the bombing, he urged the young men of his congregation to take arms in defense of Basque independence. (Photo: Authors’ Collection)
The church of San Juan. Small and simple, it drew its congregation from working-class people in the poorer part of town. (Photo: A taxi)
The fifteenth-century Church of Santa María. A continuous pealing of the church bells would signal an air raid. (Photo: Studio Pepe)
The main altar of Santa María. Forty feet high and veneered with several pounds of gold leaf, it reflected the church’s more well-to-do congregation. (Photo: Studio Pepe)
The plaza in front of the railway station, with the Hotel Julián at left. On April 26, 1937, the square was filled with refugees waiting for the train to Bilbao. (Photo: A taxi)
The opposite view, looking down Calle de la Estación to the station. The first bombs fell here. (Photo: A taxi)
José Rodríguez, general manager of Astra-Unceta. He contrived to delay the Republicans’ plan to move the arms factory to Bilbao. Photo: Augusto Unceta)
Rufino Unceta, probably the most influential man in Guernica. When his factory was occupied by Republican troops, he kept his Nationalist sympathies well concealed. (Photo: Augusto Unceta)
Astra-Unceta, one of two major weapons plants in Guernica, was not damaged in the attack. (Photo: Augusto Unceta)
Antonio Arazamagni, twenty-year-old baker and proud possessor of one of the few cars in Guernica in 1937. (Photo: Antonio Arazamagni)
The public school plaza. A traditional meeting place for young lovers, it was also the site of open-air dancing on Sunday and Monday evenings. (Photo: Studio Pepe)
The town band, its members sporting their Basque berets. They provided music for dancing at the Plaza Las Escuela. (Photo: A taxi)
Juan Dominguiz and his troops were now within sight of Marquina. It lay below them, in a hollow, surrounded by fertile farmland.
Dominguiz surveyed the scene through his binoculars. He could see a road entering the town from the east, and on it, hundreds of retreating men. The road from the north was also crowded. In the surrounding hills soldiers moved singly and in groups, picking their way. There were even a few on the road leading west out of Marquina toward Guernica.
This was no orderly retreat, but a rabble falling back without order.
He lowered his glasses and looked again at Marquina. Its church—massive, ancient, nobly proportioned of weathered stone—rose majestically. He turned back to the mountains. As the sun shone between banks of cloud, the hills changed color, from dark green to rose to copper. The shade reminded him of his fiancée’s hair.
Down the mountain slopes the soldiers continued to stumble toward Marquina. Dominguiz looked again to the town. High above its bell tower, he saw what appeared to be a flock of birds. The lieutenant reached for his binoculars, and after a moment’s pause, turned to his men.
“Bombers!”
At 10:45 A.M. Father Iturran nodded to the three youths in the circular room and each tugged at a rope that disappeared through a hole in the ceiling. From far above, in the bell tower, the three bells of the Church of Santa María began to peal out the summons to the main Mass of the day.
Father Iturran hurried through the church, pausing to make the sign of the cross before the main altar. Covered with several pounds of pure gold, the altar was twenty feet wide at the base and towered sixty feet into the gloom of the Gothic curved ceiling.
Behind him the pews were filling, mostly with women and children; many of their men had gone to the war. The families sat in their best clothes, watchful and grave. Father Iturran nodded and smiled at the children as he went back into the presbytery.
He now had less than ten minutes to read through his notes before delivering the most important sermon of his life. The elderly priest wondered what Father Eusebio would say when he heard about it. Perhaps the sermon would lead to a rapprochement; the past weeks had been lonely since the young priest had stopped calling. But before that, the tension between them over the war had become unbearable. Father Iturran had preferred silence, Father Eusebio unreserved militancy.
What the parish priest of Santa María intended to say this Sunday morning was not planned to impress his younger colleague. Father Iturran’s only concern was that his parishioners know what he thought about the war, the attitude of the Church hierarchy in Rome, and in particular, the threat facing all the women and children who now sat patiently waiting in the congregation for High Mass to begin.
As he scanned his notes, he was filled with a feeling of excitement.
Half a mile away, in the Church of San Juan, Father Eusebio Arronategui lit the altar candles. The church was situated close to the Rentería Bridge, its congregation made up largely of the working-class people who lived in the poorer part of the town, that maze of cobbled streets between the bridge and the railway station. It was a rough-and-tumble area of taverns, tiny shops, and humble homes. But Father Eusebio had accepted every challenge of this, his first ministry.
At twenty-seven, he didn’t mind that his presbytery was cramped, that its walls were damp for half of the year. Nor, like some of his predecessors, did he feel uncomfortable ministering in the shadow of Santa María. In April 1936, when Father Eusebio had first arrived in Guernica, the previous incumbent of San Juan had cautioned him to “beware of the Pope in the church on the hill.”
Even in his cassock Father Eusebio looked a countryman, short, muscular, with dark hair and windburned face. His rope-soled shoes made him appear a rustic in holy orders. But his voice, incisive and commanding, was that of a born preacher. And this Sunday morning he meant to use it to maximum advantage.
As he waited for Mass to begin, his mind turned to Father Iturran. He liked the priest of Santa María, but every sermon he preached had widened the rift between them. He could remember the night the war began. They had been in Father Iturran’s presbytery indulging their common interest in the Basque language and its origins when Radio Bilbao had interrupted its program to report that fighting had broken out. Father Iturran had suggested that they both pray “for the Church in this time of strife.”
Soon afterward, Father Eusebio had launched an impassioned attack from his pulpit, condemning the Nationalists, “who fight in the name of God, but are the agents of the Devil.” He had tried to convert the old priest to his point of view, but Father Iturran was not to be persuaded. Their evenings together had become bitter debates. On Sundays, Father Eusebio had continued to lambast the Nationalists. Finally, after an especially outspoken sermon a month ago, Father Iturran had warned that if such talk continued, he would have to report the matter to the Bishop of Bilbao.
On this Sunday morning, the young priest had no doubt that when Father Iturran heard what he had said, he would carry out that threat.
The Santa María bells were a warning to pretty María Ortuza that she was behind her usual Sunday morning timetable. By now she should have finished lunch preparations. But the constant demands of her mistress, the autocratic Señora Dolores de Arriendiara, had disrupted María’s schedule.
Twice during the morning she had been summoned to the drawing room to explain why the household budget had risen again this week. The old lady had questioned the cost of some fish and demanded to know why María had bought a kilo of corn. Patiently, the young housekeeper had explained it was for the hens that every morning produced two eggs for the señora’s breakfast.
With her mistress’s warning to be “more careful” still in her ears, twenty-two-year-old María tried to make up for lost time. She toyed with the idea of not going to Mass, but she knew Señora Arriendiara would regard it as a serious matter if any of her staff missed church.
María put the Sunday lunch, a rabbit, in a dish and placed it in the oven. She would add the vegetables when she returned from church, and she hoped the fastidious señora would not notice they had not been marinated in the meat juice.
María slipped a coat over the black smock each of the maids wore when on duty. After straightening her thick lisle stockings, she removed her white cap and placed a mantilla over her dark hair. Then she hurried out of the servants’ door at No. 8 Calle Allende Salazar and joined the other worshipers walking toward Santa María Church.
Only after she had entered the church and was seated in a pew reserved for the Arriendiara household did María remember that in her anxiety not to be late for Mass she had forgotten to heat the oven.
For a moment she thought to flee the church. But just as she was about to move, Señora Arriendiara arrived to occupy the end seat of the pew, effectively blocking her escape.
Juan Silliaco had still not settled the question of his son’s going to Bilbao to escape the Moors. When they discussed the matter over breakfast, the boy cried, begging not to be sent away. Silliaco did not press the point; instead, he intended to raise the subject again later in the day, when Pedro might be more willing to anticipate the excitement of a trip to Bilbao.
In an attempt to cheer him up, he decided to take Pedro walking through the town before church. They paused periodically for Silliaco to explain the plans he and the other volunteer firemen had devised to fight a blaze in this shop or that apartment house. At the end of each little lecture he used one of his favorite phrases: “Anticipation is half the battle.”
He was careful to hide from his son his fear that large parts of Guernica were virtual firetraps, especially in the commercial center through which they now walked.
Constructed principally from timber dry with age, the wood frame buildings were a fireman’s nightmare. The situation, in Silliaco’s opinion, was made worse by the narrow streets that could act as wind conductors during a fire, fanning the flames along their length. Danger was further compounded by the behavior of the refugees; they had camped with their open fires and braziers almost throughout the square. A spark from one of them could bring the catastrophe he most feared.
His mind filled with such thoughts, he and his son reached the fire station. Silliaco glanced at his watch. There was still time. Together, they slipped through a side door into the silence of the station. Thirteen years of handling the equipment still had not blunted Silliaco’s fascination for the polished brass couplings, the coils of hose pipes, the steel axes, and the gleaming horse-drawn truck. During a fire his place was beside the driver.
Pedro looked at the truck. Then he turned to his father and asked, “Papa, are the ones in Bilbao bigger?”
“Much bigger.”
The boy looked wistful. In silence they left the fire station and walked the remaining few yards to the Church of San Juan, each alone with his thoughts. As they entered, Juan Silliaco knew now that his son would go to Bilbao.
On the other side of the town, Rufino Unceta had perfectly timed his arrival with his family at the Church of Santa María. They settled themselves in the first pew immediately beneath the pulpit at precisely the moment the church bells stopped tolling. The Uncetas knelt on their stools, closed their eyes, and offered up their private prayers. Then, when the bells struck the eleventh hour of the morning, they resumed their places on the polished bench.
In the pew immediately behind the Uncetas, diminutive José Rodríguez looked at his wife and smiled. It had been close, but they had reached the church ahead of the Uncetas. To have arrived after the ruling industrial family of Guernica had taken their seats would have been unthinkable, even for Rodríguez, who played such a part in the Unceta fortunes.
Thirty-six years old and barely five feet tall, Rodríguez was Unceta’s troubleshooting general manager. Nowadays he carried on his shoulders the daily burden of coping with, and sometimes outwitting, the troops guarding the factory. Even now, in church, Rodríguez was hatching new plans to delay moving the Astra-Unceta complex to Bilbao on Tuesday.
His object was somehow to safeguard the factory, so that it could be handed over in working order to the Nationalists when, and if, they took Guernica. He was hampered in his plans because he could not be sure when the Nationalists would strike. If they attacked before Tuesday, he would have the delicate task of hiding as many of the factory’s vital machine parts as he could, in order to thwart any plans Lieutenant Gandaría might have for sabotaging the factory before the Nationalists arrived. On the other hand, if the Nationalists were to launch their attack against the town after Tuesday, Rodríguez would have the equally delicate job of causing those same vital parts to break down. Then, he hoped, Gandaría would not think it worthwhile to remove them to Bilbao.
Rodríguez was still considering the matter when the procession led by Father Iturran moved down the central aisle and the High Mass was sung.
The Low Mass in the Church of San Juan was said without music. Father Eusebio felt this simpler form of worship was more in keeping with the church itself, which had few of the outward trappings of Spanish Christianity. There were no Virgins who wept tears of real emeralds, few gold-covered altars and blood-streaked Christs; none of the “overpowering feeling of religion” Father Eusebio disliked so much in the Church of Santa María.
Turning from the altar, bare except for the mandatory three cloth coverings, the cushion for the Missal, the two flickering candles, and the crucifix, the young priest looked at his congregation. Most were poorly dressed, the children hungry-looking, their parents anxious and drawn.
As he entered the pulpit he knew this was not the time to fail them. In the resounding voice that he knew thrilled them, Father Eusebio began. “Today, there are some of you who should not be here. You should be out in the fields, in the mountains, out everywhere the enemy is, resisting him and protecting your families, your homeland….”
Father Iturran began his sermon by reminding his congregation that in all the years he had preached to them, he had constantly said it was sufficient to know who God was and what He was. Knowing that, he told them, was enough for them to be able to receive the full and comforting benefits of their religion.
Carmen Batzar was disappointed. After arranging the flowers in the chapel of Santa Clara convent every Sunday, she came to church and waited for Father Iturran to speak on the issue that most concerned her—the war. She wanted him to tell her that her fiancé, Lieutenant Juan Dominguiz, was right to risk his life for the separatist cause.
At the rear of the church, sixteen-year-old Juan Plaza stifled a yawn as Father Iturran began to develop another thread familiar from past sermons: Life on earth was like a bird, passing, but eternal life was everlasting.
Rufino Unceta and his family looked up at the pulpit. Father Iturran was talking along well-worn lines, and the familiarity of the words was comforting.
Several more sentences passed before they, and the rest of the congregation of some five hundred, realized that their spiritual adviser was veering in a direction both new and disturbing.
“For months I have failed you by speaking only of abstract things—and not what must passionately concern you all. That does not mean I have not shared in my heart your feelings about the war. But the time has come for you all to know that your anger has been my anger at brother fighting brother. Your sorrow has been my sorrow at the Church divided. Your revulsion has been my revulsion at the atrocities committed ‘in the name of God.’ It is enough to shake one’s faith. That must not be shaken. But your faith in me, your priest, would be shaken, perhaps even has been shaken, if I did not now speak out and warn you of the evil that is coming closer to our community….”
Gasps came from various parts of the nave. In his pew, the mayor stirred uneasily and looked at Father Iturran, willing him to stop. But the priest continued to talk of impending disaster.
Carmen Batzar felt a surge of excitement. Her silent plea had been answered.
Later, many would remember how Father Iturran paused once in his sermon to sweep his eyes over the congregation, then fix his gaze on Rufino Unceta.
People would also recall how the two men stared briefly at each other, how Unceta “seemed to hunch into himself,” like “an armadillo taking shelter from impending attack.”
In fact, Father Iturran had settled upon Unceta for a quite different reason—he hoped for some sign of approval from the powerful industrialist. Instead, he saw only an unblinking face.
Drawing again upon his reserves, the elderly priest continued his sermon.
“Life,” thundered Father Eusebio in the Church of San Juan, “is sacred. To take life is a crime.”
He, too, swept his eyes over his congregation. Then he went on: “But to give your life in defense of all you hold dear in the name of God—your wives, your children, your homes—then, I tell you, it is permissible to give your lives. And if need be, to take life in defense of those things!”
Juan Silliaco shifted uncomfortably as Father Eusebio reminded his parishioners of the agony of St. Agnes.
“She was a child, twelve years old. They took her, stripped her naked, and violated her, and finally, when they had had their way, they murdered her. St. Agnes was sustained in her agony by her faith. We must also be sustained in belief. But we must not let our children be molested because we did nothing to defend them. We must not let our wives be taken because we did nothing. There have been many instances in this war similar to the rape of St. Agnes. Such violations can only be halted by firm action. Go, I say, you young people here, go and defend all that is precious to you, to all of us!”
Father Eusebio lowered his voice and ended, “God will not judge you guilty, because in His eyes you cannot be guilty for defending that which is right.”
There was silence. Then, in various parts of the nave, one young man after another rose and left the church.
In the Church of Santa María, Father Iturran’s voice was rising, stronger than it had ever been. He cried out, “In Spain men and women and children are being killed in the barbaric name of the Nationalists in a manner we cannot have considered possible. They dare to commit their crimes in the name of God. God would never sanction their wickedness. It is tragic that the Church, by the silence of its leaders, appears to be condoning this evil. I must say to you that I cannot for one moment believe the Holy Father, if he knew what was happening here, would condone it. By speaking out, I hope others who have chosen the path of silence will now also come forward, so that the Holy Father will know of the dreadful things being done in God’s name.”
He paused, waiting for his words to register, looking down at his notes. Written on the paper was: “Parish priest of Eunari.”
The terrible story of that priest had come to Father Iturran secondhand. He had questioned its authenticity, but in the end he had been forced to conclude it was true: The story was too chilling, too outrageous to have been invented.
He knew it would shock, even revolt, many in his congregation. But he had decided to use it because it would help his congregation to realize he knew what was happening in the war, and also to learn where he, personally, stood.
Father Iturran glanced up at the huge statue of the Virgin Mary and Christ built into the main altar, then turned back and faced the congregation.
“The Moors arrived as the priest was saying Mass. They cut off his nose and skewered it to his tongue. Then they chopped off his ears and left him to die suspended from the church bell tower. That is why I have urged that at least the women and children should depart in the next few days before the Moors come.”
Father Iturran left the pulpit, aware of sobbing among the women.
Shortly before noon, Lieutenant Gandaría was called from the communications room in La Merced Convent to see the young men from the Church of San Juan. They told him they wished to enlist. When he asked if they could each handle a rifle, all said they could. He told them to report back on Monday morning. Then Gandaría returned to the communications room and tried again to contact the command post in Marquina. The line was dead.
Gandaría then telephoned GHQ in Galdacano. He was told to “stop bothering” them unless he had information to impart. Gandaría reminded GHQ of the three trains he had been promised to evacuate the Astra-Unceta complex on Tuesday. He was informed the matter was “in hand.”
Not for the first time, Gandaría felt the General Staff were displaying a dangerous laxness in their pursuit of the war.
He told the telephonist to keep trying to raise Marquina, even though it was probably a waste of time. He guessed the line had been broken by an artillery shell. For once he was wrong.