Gernika Lives (1989)

On April 26, 1987 during the 50th Anniversary of the Bombing of Guernica-Lumo, its silenced survivors finally narrate their personal stories of that horrific day for my very personal and instinctual video documentary titled, Gernika Lives. This was the first aerial bombing on an innocent population in world history. Gernika is the emblem of Euskalerria, the Basque region in Northern Spain, and Southern France. My father told me that after the destruction, Spain's Fascist regime forced Guernica's survivors to falsify the truth of their reality and prohibited them to speak their language (unrelated to Spanish) in an attempt to abolish Basque identity, known for representing the indigenous peoples of Europe. This apocalyptic bombing was not only a practice run prior to WWII but to serve as a threat to Euskadi, and Republican Spain. In my early twenties I put aside my acting career and embarked on this passionate documentary adventure wanting to capture the voices and essence of Gernika's surviving witnesses. The profound traumatic memories of vividly painful horrors are here expressed. I was barely six or seven when I would sit on my aita's lap and listen to him tell me stories of his atrocious childhood, enduring the constant air raids, and the Spanish Civil War with his protective mother hovering over him. I remember his eyes welling-up with tears that ran down his cheeks, and he apologizing to me. for his unfortunate trauma. Prior to Gernika's bombing, when my aita was barely three, his family's comfortable chalet in Barakaldo was appropriated by the Fascist Nationalists. Having been left homeless they were forced to flee on cargo trains to France, and then to Barcelona until their return to the shattered remains of Guernica where they settled.