“When my grandmother told me what had happened in the bombing, the same fear I saw in her gaze is felt in the eyes of the people you see in the news. History repeats itself and we have to do something.” Maitane Uriarte Atxikallende is one of the few who experienced the bombing of Gernika. “We could say that we are the last generation to have collected first-hand the testimonies of that disaster on 26 April 1937,” Uriarte stressed at the presentation ceremony to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Gernika bombing. He's working on the Lobak project with other young cultural creators.

The Lobak project has also worked on the elaboration of a comprehensive programme of claims to be held on 29 and 30 April in Gernika. On the last weekend of April, Gernika-Lumo will host an international meeting against war and in favour of refugees.

The Ongi Etorri Errefuxiatuak platform has assumed the direction of the project that this weekend wants to bring together thousands and thousands of people in the Basque Country. “Not to repeat what happened in Gernika,” says Uriarte. This was also expressed in the presentation: “We came with a clear message: our grandparents were also refugees and it is now up to us to help people fleeing war. May our people, once destroyed by injustice, be today the nest of the warmest welcome.”

This symbolic welcome will take place on 29 April: a giant march to show its support for refugees. To this end, they have appealed to concentrate on Muxika and all those gathered there will make a joint and silent march to the people of Gernika-Lumo.

Maitane Azurmendi had the idea of taking the march. He is a member of the Ongi etorri Errefuxiatuak platform and also works on the Lobak project. In summer 2016 he was in Thessaloniki (Greece) at the No Border complaint act. There, along with other friends, he moved to show solidarity with the refugees and to exert political pressure on the governments of the area. As he told us, “the intention is to bring people together to Gernika and send governments a message: We have to help refugees! I don’t want a generation to ask what we did in 20 years’ time.”

Azurmendi must not forget the “despair” that appeared on the faces of the people he saw in the refugee camps. “There, all they have is to hold queues: breakfast, eat, get some garment, wash the children, get a blanket… They live as if there had been time, nothing to do.” Having seen this, I was thinking nothing more than doing something when I was coming home and so the project emerged Ongi Etorri Gernika, 2017.

“80. We would like to point out that there were also children here who had to leave on the occasion of the anniversary. We want Euskal Herria to be a place of welcome,” he stressed. “After all, they are fleeing the war and we cannot close the doors to them. We don’t have to be afraid, because I don’t even want to imagine if we were to go out ourselves, and if we realized there’s no one to help us, what we would do.”

People's initiative

Azurmendi explained to us that it was very easy for local groups to get involved in the project and to have drawn up a comprehensive programme. Throughout the month of April, numerous events have been held in Gernika in commemoration of the 80th anniversary: round tables of peace, conferences on historical memory, plays, film screenings and how not to bombard the same day, 26 April, mermaid sound and initiative 4 minutes, popular theatre at Gernika Garreta and candlelight demonstration.

This year, moreover, the Gernika Garretan theatre has been renovated with the same name. With the help of Onintza Enbeita, they wanted to update the script and accommodate the refugee drama that is being experienced. “80 years ago 4,000 children left Santurtzi aboard Havana, fleeing the war. 80 years later, life jackets are brought to tens of thousands of children to flee the war on the motorboats. They knew where they were going; today they don’t know where they are going to go,” Azurmendi tells us. Therefore, theater is also a gesture to remind people, boys and girls, that they have to flee from that situation.

Gernika 2037

Bertsolari and screenwriter Igor Elortza said in Bertsolari magazine Carta to Franco’s grandson that “the wounds that the stories told without telling are the ones that must be cured.” This is the concern of all those who are organizing the Ongi Etorri Gernika 2017 program.

Uriarte, from the Lobak group, says that her grandmother always lived the fear of post-war. “He told us only if we asked, and always very carefully. Even after Franco, he was left with that fear within.” What’s more, the nephew of the bombing’s descendants says they’ve seen a lot of the emptiness of their house for years. “The history of the people is paralyzed by fear. Even living our grandmother, she has always told us “to be careful”, this has always been inside: with that fear she has grown and lived always, even if everything is finished”.

In this sense, Bernardo Atxaga, who directed in 2016 Gernikarra Hannot Mintengia, states in the documentary Mark that “remembering, memory, requires a lot of work; it is essential that there are some supports, something, there are signs to remember, because the normal is not remembering, the normal is to forget”.

To keep in mind, the Lobak project has taken the testimony of its predecessors. As the seminar said, “memory should be understood as something that forces you to undertake in the present”.

This is the Lobak project. In 2012 it began as a space for cultural and artistic creation. It was formed by their survivors of the bombing, “with the testimony and legacy they have left us so that everyone can contribute in their field,” said Maitane Uriarte.

Many of them participated in the documentary Mark, giving their testimonies and expressing their feelings. The project Gernika 2037, memory and public space presented on April 20 in Astra was then born: Project to recover the historical-physical heritage of Gernika.

“Many tourists ask if there is no trace of what has happened in the village, but the question is that the Gernika behind the bombs was completely destroyed and had to be rebuilt,” Uriarte tells us. “We really don’t know anything about Gernika, about Gernika after the bombing. The brands in the recording of the documentary discovered a column with the firing marks of the weapons of civil war. We have not known it and that, whether you like it or not, is part of our historical heritage.”

That is why “it is a question of identifying the marks of places that have remained from the bombing, setting in motion a plan for the recovery of our heritage, both of the civil war and of the previous and subsequent war”. As Uriarte explained, it is a long-term project, “a challenge for the centenary of the bombing”.

Muxika-Gernika, silent march

On Saturday and Sunday, the demands will be made to “keep alive the memory of what happened in Gernika” and “paralyze what happens in those other “Gernika” that today have forced millions of people to flee”. The Ongi Etorri Errefuxiatuak platform has organised the Gernika Commission, with the collaboration of Arrano Kultur Elkartea, Gernika Garretan, Sare-Gernika, Lobak, Gernika Zine-kluba, Gite-Ipes, Nkap and Gernika Gogoratuz. On Saturday, marches will be held in support of the refugees, who will travel several places in Euskal Herria on foot or by bike and will come together to Gernika in a silent demonstration.

On Sunday, for its part, thematic workshops and workshops have been organised “so that people can learn about other solidarity initiatives – says Azurmendi – that are being carried out here and there, and to encourage collaboration between them. After all, what we are looking for is for people to get involved and to strengthen the solidarity network as much as possible.”

We translate this and many other articles into English for us to broadcast the news of Euskal Herria: argia.eus/english