Guernica: In a gesture heavy with historical reckoning and moral weight, Frank Walter Steinmeier, President of Germany, became the first German head of state to visit Guernica the Basque town that was razed by Nazi bombs on April 26, 1937.
Accompanied by Felipe VI of Spain and Basque regional leader Imanol Pradales, Steinmeier laid a wreath at the cemetery where a mausoleum stands to remember the hundreds of civilians killed in the bombing a chilling early instance of modern aerial warfare targeting non-combatants.
At a gala dinner in Madrid prior to the visit, the German President spoke plainly about his country’s past: “Germans bear a heavy burden of guilt in Guernica,” he said, urging that “we do not forget what happened back then. This crime was committed by Germans.” For him, the visit is not just symbolic, but a stark reminder of the perils of forgetting history.
He described the 1937 bombing carried out by the infamous Condor Legion as a warning: a call to defend peace, freedom and human dignity in an age when rising extremist forces threaten democratic values across Europe.
Earlier in the visit, Steinmeier also saw Guernica (Picasso) at Madrid’s museum, the painting that turned the atrocity into a global emblem of suffering and resistance underscoring how memory and art remain intertwined in the struggle against war and oblivion.
This landmark visit comes almost three decades after the first official German apology in 1997, and amid renewed tensions in European politics as far-right ideologies gain ground reinforcing the message that remembrance is not optional but essential.