His fellow eyewitnesses are dying off, but Alfonso Canovas, 95, remembers Barcelona becoming one of the first major cities in the world to be subjected to a campaign of aerial bombardment.
“I wasn’t even there for the worst of it,” he said. “But I saw bombs fall, and I was told about how they bombed the Gran Via, leaving the street littered with body parts, which also hung from the trees.”
In 1938 Italian aircraft rained bombs on the Catalan city as they broke non-intervention treaties to support General Francisco Franco’s rightwing rebels in the Spanish Civil War. The use of attacks from the air was designed to provoke panic, kill civilians and destroy morale. Within a few years, the technique would spread through war-torn Europe as cities such as Coventry, Hamburg and Dresden were subjected to blanket bombing.
Now, 75 years after one of those bombs killed his father Jose, Canovas has helped persuade a Spanish court to investigate former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s air force for war crimes. The case was accepted by a Barcelona court last week.
“These indiscriminate bombardments of civilians targeted densely populated neighborhoods,” a panel of three magistrates said. “The front line was far away, making this a laboratory for future civilian bombardments and producing mass crimes that would be punishable by any law at any time or place.”
“This is not about revenge,” Canovas said. “I have been a pacifist since I was 12 years old and I do not want to restart old arguments. I can pardon, but what we can’t do is forget. It is important that people know the truth about what those particular Italians did at that time.”
Canovas’ father was killed early in 1938, when Italian bomber squadrons based on Mallorca ratcheted up their bombing campaign. Mussolini sent instructions: “Start violent action on Barcelona tonight, with constant hammering diluted over time.”
Every three hours for the next three days a fresh wave of bombers appeared, killing 670 people in attacks that appalled foreign onlookers and brought protests from the Vatican and the US.
Since World War II, Italians have seen former Nazi officials pursued in their courts for war crimes, but have rarely debated Italy’s role in the Spanish Civil War.
Although Mussolini’s troops allegedly also committed atrocities during campaigns in Libya and Ethiopia, and later in Slovenia and Greece, only one public apology has ever been given. In 2011 former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi apologized to his friend, late Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, and offered compensation.
While Canovas has added his name to the private prosecution, the real organizers are a group of mainly leftwing Italians living in Barcelona.
One of these, math teacher Guido Ramellini, said that the raids were among the first experiments in the bombardment of cities.
“When the British wanted to know how to build bomb shelters during the Blitz, they called on expertise from Barcelona,” he said.
“I know some people will call us traitors to our homeland, but we believe all humanity is our homeland, and Europe too. There is no reason why we should bury the ghosts of Europe’s past,” Ramellini said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia