Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky paralleled the war in his country with the massacre in Guernica, the town in the Basque Country that was bombed in 1937 by Adolf Hitler’s air force, which supported Franco during the Spanish invasion.
“We are in April 2022 but one would think it is April 1937, when people learned what happened in one of your cities, Guernica,” Zelenski told the Spanish Parliament.
The Ukrainian president, who a few minutes earlier had spoken via video call to the UN Security Councilcompared Guernica with Mariupol, which is besieged by the Russian army and where “only ruins remain, where 90% of the buildings were destroyed, where people die.”
The Guernica massacre inspired one of his most famous paintings Pablo Picassoa shocking, anti-war work depicting the sufferings of war.
Zelensky’s speech was applauded by MEPs during his 10 – minute speech.
“As President Zelensky said, we never imagined we would see images of bombings and massacres of innocent civilians on European soil again.“, Commented the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
On the afternoon of April 26, 1937, Guernica was bombed by the Nazis – the first city in history to be destroyed by an airstrike targeting civilians. To this day, sources do not agree with the report: Basque authorities put the death toll at 1,654, while other historians put the figure at 150-300.
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