"Guernica will always be a record of a time that is still hard to speak of"

NEXT YEAR IS THE 90TH ANNIVERSARY of the bombing of the town of Guernica in Spain's Basque region during the Spanish Civil War.

- KAVITA PURI

The brutality, captured in Pablo Picasso's contemporaneous black-andwhite painting, has become iconic of the horrors of war, as well as the country's painful past. It is now at the centre of a new political tussle over where the painting should be to commemorate the anniversary.

I have been lucky enough to see Guernica twice. The first time I saw it was when I was covering the Madrid terrorist attacks on four morning commuter trains in 2004. When I stood before it, the country was in agony over the deaths of almost 200 people at the hands of a jihadist cell inspired by al-Qaeda. The second time was last year. It was a different experience. Tourists were taking selfies of themselves with the famous picture. But many Spaniards stood quietly in reverence, as if they had come in pilgrimage to see the painting that captures a terrible part of its recent history.