"As soon as we heard an explosion, the warm wind caressed us."
- I am Luis Iriondo. I'm 89 years old, and I experienced the bombing of Gernika. He was then thirteen years old. I lived with my mother, my father and my three siblings in a humble family, my father had a carbonera and my mother had a furniture store.
For the first time, I met the war on the beach. Shortly afterwards, we learned that some towns near Gernika were bombed, including Durango. This affected the population, which immediately began the construction of shelters, just in case. I was on everyone's lips. On 25 April, for example, my friend Cipri told me that he had a shelter ready for a bombing and that, if it happened, he would run there.
The next day I went to the bank and while I was there I heard the bells ringing. It was the warning of the planes, they were ready, maybe on top. Indeed, they were upon the people. I left immediately in search of refuge with a bank employee. The explosions started as soon as the places where the market was made passed. I remember people running, screaming. The spaces that we had built were in the subsurface and pushed me into one of them. The ceiling was low and it was very hot, so in a few minutes we had a hard time breathing. A man who was there told us to bend over, because it was easier to catch oxygen at the bottom, and so we did. I remembered Cipri, my friend, all the time I was there and I thought about what I had been told the day before, when I was watching planes. Because the next day, when I went to school, I would have the opportunity to tell all that he had seen, as I hadn't.
When the explosions stopped, we went out into the street, but immediately resumed the march. People would run from one side to the other looking for a safe place. The sound of the bombs was getting closer and closer. As soon as an explosion was heard, the wind caressed us. I started praying, but the planes seemed not to leave.
When I finished and went out into the street, I was scared. All the people burned and the sky was covered by a dark cloud. I didn't know if the bombings had ended forever, and I ran to the Lumo Road. I saw all Gernika burning. I came to the corner of Cipri, but they didn't let me pass.
After a while I found all the houses and my father went to see how the house was. Everything was destroyed. So we went from Gernika to Bilbao and then to France. When we returned to our country, I learned that my friend Cipri had died in the bombing.
