Four weeks before Guernica, there was Durango. On the morning of March 31, 1937, as parishioners gathered for mass in two of the town's churches, German Junkers Ju 52s and Italian Savoia-Marchetti SM.81s appeared overhead. The bombers came in relays. When the explosions stopped, around 250 civilians were dead, including 14 nuns and the priest who had been officiating. Durango had no air defenses. It had almost no warning. And today, it is largely forgotten.
The bombing came on the first day of the Nationalist offensive against the Republican-held province of Biscay. General Emilio Mola commanded the campaign and issued a blunt ultimatum: "I have decided to terminate rapidly the war in the north. Those not guilty of assassinations and who surrender their arms will have their lives and property spared. But, if submission is not immediate, I will raze all Vizcaya to the ground, beginning with the industries of war." Durango and the neighboring town of Elorrio were bombed that same day, signaling that the threat was not rhetorical.
Durango was a town of 10,000 inhabitants, a road and railway junction between Bilbao and the front lines. Bombing its infrastructure served a clear military purpose: it would prevent Republican forces from sending reinforcements and block an orderly retreat. But the town had no anti-aircraft guns, and there were only a handful of Republican fighter planes in the entire Basque region. The German and Italian aircraft, transport planes modified to carry bombs, operated with impunity. Heinkel He 51 fighters followed the bombers, strafing civilians as they fled through the streets.
The timing of the attack compounded its horror. Two churches were hit during the celebration of mass, when they were full of worshippers. Fourteen nuns and the officiating priest were among the dead. The bombs made no distinction between combatant and civilian, between military infrastructure and sanctuary. Foreign observers who saw the aftermath were stunned by the scale of the destruction in a town with no military significance beyond its crossroads. Different historians have tallied the dead at slightly different figures -- 248, 250, 258 -- but the scale of the killing was unprecedented for the Spanish conflict at that point.
The Nationalists denied responsibility, claiming that Republican forces had killed the nuns and priest and burned the churches themselves. General Queipo de Llano stated that "our planes bombed military targets in Durango, and later communists and socialists locked up the priests and nuns, shooting without pity and burning the churches." On April 28, Durango fell to the Nationalist side. Then, on April 26, just four weeks after Durango, the Condor Legion bombed Guernica. It was Guernica, with its deeper cultural symbolism as the seat of Basque democracy and Picasso's searing painting, that came to define the horror of aerial warfare against civilians. Durango became a footnote. But it was the rehearsal.
Located at 43.17N, 2.63W in the Ibaizabal valley of Biscay, approximately 30km southeast of Bilbao. The town sits at a road and rail junction in a narrow valley between green hills. Nearest airport is Bilbao (LEBB). Best viewed at 2,000-4,000 feet AGL. The terrain that made Durango a strategic junction -- converging roads between mountains -- is clearly visible from the air.