8. The Spanish Nationalists Blame the Republicans
There was a great deal of criticism of the raid around the world. Many democracies, in particular, were appalled by the fact that the Germans had apparently deliberately targeted innocent civilians. The Spanish Nationalists were privately very happy with the outcome of the raids. They believed that the deaths and the destruction at Guernica would force the Basques to surrender. In public, they tried to downplay the impact of the German air raids on the city. They asserted that the reports of civilian deaths and the destruction of the city were all communist lies. In fact, they tried to say that nothing had really happened. Indeed when evidence came to light that of the destruction of the city, the Spanish Nationalists tried to blame the Republicans. They stated that the retreating Republicans had destroyed the city of Guernica as part of a scorched earth policy and that they had ruined it and not the Condor Legion.
During Franco’s decades of rule, it was forbidden to report on what had happened at Guernica. In the official histories and in the newspapers there was no mention of the bombing of Guernica and this continued right until the death of the Spanish dictator in 1975.