Introduction: Analysing Spanish Politics

Abstract

On 26 July 1992, with a massive police escort and amid considerable controversy, Pablo Picasso’s Guernica was moved from the Casón del Buen Retiro at Madrid’s Prado Museum to the city’s newly-opened modern art gallery, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. At Picasso’s behest, Guernica — a searing condemnation of the Civil War atrocity in which Nazi aeroplanes, on behalf of General Franco, bombed the undefended Basque market town to destruction — had come to Spain only after the restoration of democracy. Picasso, who died in 1973, never saw his wish fulfilled; Franco outlived him by two years, and not until 1981 was Guernica finally shipped from New York’s Museum of Modern Art (where it had remained on extended loan since 1939) to be displayed in its own special gallery at the Prado.