The ghost of Guernica

By Carlos Alberto Montaner

The Basque regional government wants the government of Spain to ask for forgiveness for the bombing on Guernica on April 26, 1937, during the Civil War. Guernica the was  -- and still is -- a small town, not very far from Bilbao, with a population of about 5,000. One hundred and fifty people were killed and 70 percent of the buildings were destroyed or damaged during the raid by German planes, allies of Franco during the conflict. Allegedly, the purpose was to destroy two arms factories and a bridge, but those objectives were not touched, which led people to assume that the Germans wanted to try out their new warplanes, certain that World War II would erupt shortly thereafter. The government of the Spanish republic used the episode as a propaganda weapon and Pablo Picasso wasted no time in painting "Guernica," an impressive mural in black and white, filled with violence and horrified horses, perhaps the most famous and admired painting of the 20th Century.

What does the Basque government seek with this requested apology? The bombing of Guernica was no worse than one hundred other monstrosities committed by both sides during the three years of Civil War. Those events, which occurred seven decades ago, blurred by time and almost unknown by today's Spaniards, took place amid a conflict provoked by the tensions among fascists, socialists, communists and anarchists, typical of an era in which liberal democracy and the rule of law had disappeared almost throughout the European continent (and Latin America.)

Why should the government of this democratic and peaceable Spain, which barely remembers the Civil War, ask for forgiveness from the Basques? From whom? Half the Basques sided with the nationalists, the Franco side, and allied themselves with the Germans. Is the other half being asked for forgiveness? And why don't the Basques ask the Spaniards for forgiveness for the three devastating Carlist Wars in the 19th Century that tenaciously set back the country's modernization? And while we're talking about forgiveness, wouldn't it be more reasonable for the Basque government to ask the rest of the Spaniards for the thousand-and-one murders committed by ETA?

The only transparent lesson learned from the wars is that a violent solution of conflicts always leads to barbarity and brings to the surface all the cruelty nestled in the hearts of human beings. Worse than Guernica were the mass murders of political prisoners, the shot in the back of the head of suspicious people, the tortures inflicted on the captives from both sides. Why should the grandchildren of those Spaniards have to assume the blame for the acts of their grandparents, frenzied by hatred, who happened to live during a sinister era that drove them into the abyss?

In 1971, a young American psychologist, Philip G. Zimbardo, carried out at Stanford University a blood-chilling experiment that today would be called a "role play." He selected 23 students at random and asked some to act as prison guards and the others as prisoners. What happened was remarkable: very soon, the "guards" began to mistreat the "prisoners" with a total lack of compassion, to the point that the research had to be halted for fear that some student might be severely injured. The conclusion was obvious. There is no psychological mechanism that will inhibit the unlimited brutality of human beings when there are no clear rules or institutions that enforce them. The kindly street-corner baker or the cheerful pharmacist can become machines of wrongdoing if the circumstances are propitious. No need to waste time by vindicating victims who have not asked for vindication. The only sensible homage is to protect the rule of law so Guernica will never again happen. 

January 26, 2007

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