AfriPulse
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier speaks during a ceremony in which he awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit to former Real Madrid’s German midfielder Toni Kroos at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium in Madrid on November 27, 2025. Steinmeier was in Madrid on the second day of his visit to Spain. (Photo by Oscar DEL POZO / AFP)
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will on Friday become the first German head of state to visit the Spanish town of Guernica, where Nazi bombers killed hundreds of civilians in 1937.
The Condor Legion devastated the northern Basque town on April 26, 1937, in support of General Francisco Franco’s rebels during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) alongside Fascist Italy.
Steinmeier is due to attend a wreath-laying ceremony in memory of the victims at a cemetery with Spanish King Felipe VI on the third and final day of a state visit to Spain.
The two men will then visit the town’s Museum of Peace, which tells the story of the tragedy, viewed by historians as a precursor to the mass terror bombing of civilian targets during World War II.
On Wednesday, Steinmeier urged Germans never to forget the “crime” of Guernica, for which his country had earned “a heavy burden of guilt”.
“Guernica is a reminder — a reminder to stand up for peace, freedom and the preservation of human rights,” he told a gala dinner at Madrid’s Royal Palace.
The visit comes almost 30 years after former German president Roman Herzog recognised his country’s “involvement” and called for “reconciliation”.
The raid was immortalised by Pablo Picasso’s anti-war masterpiece “Guernica”, a painting that captures the horror of innocent civilian suffering and which Steinmeier viewed at Madrid’s Reina Sofia art museum on Wednesday.
Spain remembered its own authoritarian past on November 20, which marked the 50th anniversary of Franco’s death and the end of his 36-year dictatorship.
On Thursday, Steinmeier held talks with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and presented an award to former Real Madrid and Germany star Toni Kroos at the Bernabeu stadium.
AFP
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