Why do people in the Basque country remain angry about Guernicas fate?
Many Basques believe that the painting rightly belongs at the new Guggenheim Bilbao, which is only about twenty miles from the town of Gernika, the town whose suffering was the painting’s genesis, after all. Guggenheim officials themselves doubt that a permanent move is possible, but they hold out hope that the painting one day can be exhibited temporarily in Bilbao as a symbolic unifying act. Government cultural officials in Madrid contend that the painting is too fragile to be moved, but they initiated a move themselves in 1989 when Guernica traveled the few blocks between the Prado and the Reina Sofía. With the kind of conservation and protection the painting could be provided by a museum like the Guggenheim, the ongoing appeal by the Basque government for a temporary exhibition of the painting in Bilbao might eventually be heard in Madrid. I suspect that if the painting were exhibited there, even briefly, its presence would heal wounds for Basques and Spaniards everywhere in much t
