'Guernica is a warning,' says German president on state visit to town

Eighty-eight years after Luftwaffe pilots took part in the most infamous atrocity of the Spanish civil war, Germany’s president has visited the Basque town of Guernica to honour the victims of the Nazi bombing and to urge that the “terrible crimes” committed there are never forgotten.

- Sam Jones

Hundreds of civilians were killed and hundreds more injured on 26 April 1937 when planes from the German Condor Legion, operating with aircraft from fascist Italy, spent hours bombing Guernica on market day. Adolf Hitler had loaned the Luftwaffe unit to Gen Francisco Franco’s nationalist forces to help them in their coup against the republican government, and to allow pilots to practise the blitzkrieg tactics they would use in the second world war.

The destruction of Guernica, which would become a template for the aerial bombardment of civilians, was immortalised by Pablo Picasso in the huge monochrome canvas that bears the town’s name.