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.