On Nov. 28, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier became the first head of state of the country to visit Guernica, the town in northern Spain destroyed in a 1937 Nazi air raid during Spain’s civil war, which Pablo Picasso famously depicted in a painting now on view at the Reina Sofía in Madrid.

Joined by King Felipe VI of Spain, Steinmeier called on Germans to “not forget what happened back then.” The two laid a wreath for the victims and then met two survivors of the attack at the Museum of Peace.

Steinmeier said in a speech at a state banquet, hosted by the king and Queen Letizia in Madrid on Nov. 26, that “Germans committed terrible crimes in Guernica.”

On April 26, 1937, the “feared Condor Legion bombed the city, razing it to the ground,” Steinmeier said at the event. “Hundreds

See Full Page