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Picasso’s Guernica is the ultimate emblem of the horrors of war. It has no place in Spain’s partisan squabbles | María Ramírez

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Every September, Spain celebrates one of the most symbolic moments of its transition to democracy. This year will mark 45 years since an Iberia commercial flight from New York landed in Madrid with its pilot announcing to the surprised passengers that they had just travelled with one of the country’s most famous exiles: Pablo Picasso’s Guernica. After more than four decades on display at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the painting could finally return home after the end of the Franco dictatorship, in accordance with the wishes of the Spanish painter.

Picasso’s most famous painting, which depicted the horrors inflicted on civilians during the bombing of the Basque town of Gernika in the Spanish civil war, was intended to be a cry for peace. “If world peace prevails, the war I painted will be a thing of the past,” Picasso told Josep Lluís Sert, his friend and the architect of the Spanish Republic’s pavilion at the 1937 Paris international exhibition.

In a period when the Middle East and Europe are once again being torn apart by war, Guernica is as relevant as ever and has become a global emblem of the horrors of aerial bombardment. But in Spain, Picasso’s masterpiece has become another excuse for a petty political fight.

Basque Country president Imanol Pradales, who comes from the conservative Basque Nationalist party (PNV), has requested that Guernica be transferred for a few months from Madrid’s Reina Sofía museum, which has been its only home since 1992. To see it hanging in Bilbao for the first time, Pradales said, would be a form of “reparation for the Basque people”. Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez’s centre-left government has rejected this call on conservation grounds, while conservative Spanish politicians have joined the battle, using the opportunity to attack Basque nationalism. The PNV hopes to display Guernica in Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum for a special exhibition next year, commemorating the 90th anniversary of the bombing of Gernika in April and telling the story of the painting itself.

Inspired by newspaper reports of the massive bombing of civilians by the Luftwaffe and Franco’s forces, Picasso painted Guernica in just over a month in Paris in 1937. In the late 1930s, Guernica served as a powerful political tool and travelled across Europe to drum up support for the fight against fascism and to raise funds for Spain’s republicans. It arrived in the US in 1939 and quickly became a rallying symbol of the atrocities of war and the fight for peace. A tapestry reproduction still hangs at the entrance of the UN security council in New York City.

The painting was constantly travelling during the 1950s, on loan to special exhibitions across the world from Milan to Berlin and from Stockholm to São Paulo, Philadelphia and Chicago. This in-demand existence caused damage over the years, including discoloration, dents and fractures. The conservation of the painting became a prominent concern on its overdue return to Spain in 1981.

The risks for Guernica’s integrity were also political. The first time I saw it, during a school visit as a child, Guernica was behind bulletproof glass at the Casón del Buen Retiro, an annex to the Prado museum. In my memory the painting was suffused in dim light. Spain was still a fragile democracy then, with dozens of terrorist attacks every year, and the painting was surrounded by armed policemen. It was a very different scene when, a few days ago, I saw the painting hanging in an open, luminous space with no visible barriers at the Reina Sofía museum. Visitors can even take pictures of Guernica now, something that was not allowed until 2023. The painting’s display perhaps reflects a more open and relaxed world.

Guernica has long served as a stark and global reminder of the atrocities of war. Volodymyr Zelenskyy went to see the painting with Sánchez during his trip to Madrid in November. The Ukrainian president requested the visit after referencing the painting in a speech. Guernica’s power has always come from its universality, extending beyond the massacre that inspired Picasso. It could also be considered a tribute to the free press, as the texture and monochrome black and white were a reminder that what Picasso knew of the bombing came from international newspaper reports. At MoMa, for years the painting’s description didn’t even reference the 1937 attack, only that it was a work positioned against “the war and its brutality”.

The message of Guernica may be universal, but it is also attached to the specific memory of the brutality of the bombing of the small town of Gernika – something that is now appropriately highlighted in the way the painting is presented. Indeed, its universal power comes from the very particular suffering of those civilians on 26 April 1937.

Last week, Spain’s culture minister Ernest Urtasun, from the leftist governing coalition partner Sumar, said he understood “the feeling” behind the Basque president’s request but stressed his duty “to safeguard” a vital piece of cultural heritage, citing the gallery conservation experts who have advised against any further moves. “To celebrate the 90th anniversary of Gernika, we must ensure that this work can celebrate 90 more years,” he said.

What the Spanish government sees as a technical decision is viewed by conservatives as an opportunity to attack the Basque Country’s pro-independence parties. The confrontational rightwing president of the Madrid region, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, dismissed the request to move the painting as cateto, a derogatory word that could be translated as “yokel” or “redneck”. Further angry exchanges followed.

Guernica is one of the most impressive paintings of the 20th century, and the last thing it needs is to become embroiled in yet another partisan dispute in Spain. Whether it is in Bilbao or Madrid, the painting still conveys the universal horrors of war and the suffering of civilians, and is, tragically, every bit as relevant today as it was when Picasso painted it.



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Ukraine war briefing: Moped ban in Crimea as official says noise is Kyiv plot using youth | Ukraine

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  • Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, has banned riding moped scooters, quad bikes and motorcycles at night-time, saying they sound like ⁠drone attacks and suggesting children are doing it deliberately at Kyiv’s behest. Sergei ​Aksyonov, the Russian-installed governor of the illegally occupied peninsula, said the ban would be in place between 8pm and 6am from Wednesday onwards.

  • Oleg Kryuchkov, Aksyonov’s adviser, claimed ‌separately on Telegram: “The enemy is recruiting your children for night-time ridesThe moped ⁠noise hampers the work of defence systems. Their engines sound similar [to drones].” ​Ukraine has recently intensified drone attacks on Crimea, nominally the home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet – targeting the peninsula’s supply routes and triggering a fuel crisis. A limit of 20 litres (5.3 gallons) of fuel per car at petrol stations would continue, Mikhail Razvozhayev, ​the governor of Crimea’s biggest city, Sevastopol, posted on Tuesday. Long lines of motorists queueing in Russian-controlled Crimea, southern Krasnodar region in Russia proper, and elsewhere underscore the sensitive domestic fallout from Ukraine’s strikes.

  • A Ukrainian drone attack started a fire at the refinery that is the ⁠largest fuel supplier to the Moscow region, and two industry sources told Reuters that it had halted operations. The strike on Gazprom Neft’s refinery in south-east Moscow on Tuesday damaged a primary refining facility that accounts ⁠for 53% of the plant’s capacity. Emergency services said the ⁠fire was put out and did not affected operations – information that was contradicted by Reuters sources. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, said the Moscow refinery was hit from a distance of 500km (310 miles). “This is a just response to Russian strikes – and to the dragging out of a war that must be ended.” Gazprom Neft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

  • The US could soon reinstate sanctions on Russian oil shipments, Donald Trump indicated, as leaders at the G7 summit moved on Tuesday to put the war in Ukraine back on top of their agenda. Trump said the sanctions on Russia – partly waived by the US due to the Iran war, ostensibly to help lower oil prices – can go back in place as more oil moves through the strait of Hormuz. “Soon we’ll be able to do that because the oil is now flowing. We’re in a position to do that soon.”

  • Russia should make peace with Ukraine, the US president said after a “very good” meeting with Zelenskyy. “Look, Russia should make a deal,” Trump told reporters, adding that too many young men were dying on the battlefield on both sides. “I’m gonna do whatever I can.” The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said of Trump’s statement: “I found him to be very cooperative, and ‌I also saw him listening very attentively. And ‌in that respect, once again, it gives me a certain degree of optimism that we here, as Europeans and as Americans, are now doing everything we can, together, to end the war.”

  • A Ukrainian ⁠Su-24M bomber aircraft crashed on a mission in ⁠the Khmelnitskyi region ⁠in ​western Ukraine on Tuesday ⁠and its two-member crew was killed, ⁠the Ukrainian ​air ‌force said. Ukraine is estimated to have about a dozen of the ageing SU-24 family of warplanes. They are used to launch the Scalp/Storm Shadow cruise missiles supplied by Britain and France.

  • Russian strikes on Ukraine killed at least eight people on Tuesday, officials said. A drone strike in Nikopol, central Dnipropetrovsk region, killed “a mother and son – a woman of 87 and a 51-year-old man” as well as a third person not immediately identified, said the regional governor, Oleksandr Hanzha. “The enemy targeted people ‌walking along the road with an FPV ​drone,” Oleksandr Hanzha said on Telegram. He posted a ​blurred photo ​of a ​wheelchair on ​a ‌road and ​what appeared ​to be a body underneath.

  • Russian shelling of the Donetsk region city of Sloviansk killed three people, while drone strikes on the southern Kherson region killed two people and wounded 16, according to officials. Five Russian ⁠attacks on the ⁠south-eastern Ukrainian ⁠city of ​Zaporizhzhia left one ⁠person dead, three injured and set ablaze ⁠a ​home ‌and a ‌shopping centre, ‌said Ivan Fedorov, the regional governor.

  • Repairs to the nearly 1,000-year-old Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery in Kyiv could take around two years, an official said ⁠on Tuesday. A ⁠Russian attack on ​the complex set fire to the roof of the Dormition Cathedral within ⁠the vast Unesco world heritage site. More than ‌80% of the 11th-century cathedral’s roof had been damaged, but firefighters managed to prevent the fire from spreading inside the cathedral, Maksym Ostapenko, director general of the complex, was cited as saying by Interfax Ukraine news agency.

  • A Russian artist critical of Vladimir Putin and the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has been shot and killed in ⁠the eastern Polish town of Biała Podlaska, a prosecutor has said. Local media identified the victim as Robert ⁠Kuzovkov, who was also known by his artistic pseudonym, Semyon Skrepetsky. Pjotr Sauer writes that five shots were fired at the ⁠victim, including one ⁠to the head, in the attack on Monday, ​according to Marcin Kozak, a spokesperson for the district prosecutor in Lublin. Two Belarusians ⁠had been detained but no one had yet been charged. Other Russian exiles suspected Kadyrov was responsible.

  • The Chinese ⁠embassy ​in London said it had complained to British ⁠authorities about sanctions on several entities, including four from ⁠China, for allegedly supplying key military equipment ​to Russia. “China has consistently promoted peace talks and strictly ​controlled exports of dual-use goods,” an embassy spokesperson said. “Normal exchanges and cooperation between China and Russia should ⁠not be disrupted or affected.” Britain’s latest sanctions ​package, ​announced on Tuesday, includes cracking down on ​third-​country suppliers of critical military equipment to Russia in China, Thailand and Turkey.

  • The US extended by 15 days until 1 July a sanctions waiver on Serbia’s Russian-controlled oil company NIS, allowing it to continue importing and processing crude, the firm said. Washington has demanded since early 2025 that Russia’s sanctioned Gazprom Neft sell it stake in NIS, which has been threatened by US financial sanctions that have been repeatedly postponed. Talks on the sale of the Russian-held stake in NIS to Hungary’s MOL energy company have gone on for months, with the US Treasury’s foreign assets control office extending the deadline for their completion until 16 June.



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    Streeting would 'be prepared' to trigger leadership contest as early as next week

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    But the former health secretary told BBC Newsnight he would prefer for the prime minister “to take a decision on his own terms”.



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    Argentina v Algeria: World Cup 2026 – live | World Cup 2026

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    Key events

    32 mins: Algeria get on the ball in Argentina’s half for the first time in ages. They work the ball from side to side then look to attack down the right but Almada tracks back effectively.

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