Throughout the night the fires worsened in Guernica. The heat became so intense that most people moved back to the western slopes overlooking the town. They stood in small groups, most watching in silence, some weeping quietly. Sometimes they saw policemen with hoses and soldiers with buckets working alongside the firemen. Everyone knew their task was hopeless. The fires raged out of control.
About 8:00 A.M. on Tuesday, a fine drizzle began to fall over Guernica. Later it began to rain steadily, helping the firefighters.
During the morning a passenger train arrived from Bilbao and stopped outside the town. It was soon filled with refugees. During the day the train would shuttle back and forth between the town and port, carrying hundreds behind Bilbao’s “ring of iron.”
Most of the soldiers departed, as did many of the sightseers from other towns who had come to watch Guernica burn.
The day after the raid, the Condor Legion was grounded by the weather, apart from a small action near Durango. Nevertheless, there was plenty for the airmen to talk about. News filtered through of the fall of Marquina; Nationalist ground troops were pressing toward Guernica.
In Berlin, the Nazi minister of war, Field Marshal von Blomberg, sent the Legion High Command repeated cables demanding to know who had bombed Guernica. According to Sergeant-Telegraphist Kurt Albrecht, he was ordered to reply: “Not Germans.”
Years later, Squadron Leader Freiherr von Beust said that it was about this time that “we were suddenly told to ‘hush up’ about the raid.”
That evening the Nationalists issued the first of a long series of disclaimers. On his regular nightly broadcast over Radio Seville at 10:00 P.M., General Queipo de Llano told listeners in Spain, France, and from them to the world, that the “reports that Guernica was bombed by our planes are completely false.” He suggested that the Basques themselves had destroyed the town with dynamite. That same night, the Nationalist Press Office in Salamanca repeated the lie.
And so was the legend born that Guernica was burned by its own people.
Guernica’s conquerors came early Thursday morning—Spanish, Italian, and Moroccan troops first entered the town about eight-thirty. They met some resistance; five Nationalist soldiers were killed and twenty-eight were wounded. But by ten-thirty, Franco’s flag flew over the Parliament Building. The Moors were accorded the honor of guarding its entrance.
According to all accounts, the troops behaved well; they even set up field kitchens to dispense food to anyone confident enough to approach them.
Their entrance into Guernica was easy. Every Nationalist soldier in the town crossed over the still-standing Rentería Bridge.