CommonDreams: Flawed American Policies Cast Long Shadows

[marmar]

Published on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Flawed American Policies Cast Long Shadows
by Thomas G. Palaima

Today is the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the bombardment of the city of Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War by the Italian battleship Eugenio di Savoia. The target was an airplane motor factory three blocks from the small apartment where my family is now living. None of the shells hit the factory. They hit residential areas instead, killing eighteen civilians.
Barcelona was the first modern European city to suffer what we euphemistically call "collateral damage." It also was first to suffer intentional bombardment of civilian populations, a practice later used widely by Axis and Allied governments during World War II. Barcelona was bombed 170 times between 1937 and 1939, leaving 2,500 people dead. Francisco Franco gave the German Condor Legion permission to practice terrorist bombing on the Basque town of Guernica in April 1937.

The newspaper La Vanguardia shows an aerial photograph of the Italian air strike on March 17, 1938, that leveled two city blocks of Barcelona. It was ordered by dictator Benito Mussolini in reprisal for the defeat of Italian ground troops elsewhere in Spain.

A city map in La Vanguardia shows where bombs hit. Two buildings on our block were blown up. A nearby stone building front still shows the damage of fragmentation bombs. Seven citizens reminisce in the newspaper about living for two years under bombardment as children. One said she still reacts with fear at ambulance or police sirens. ......(more)

The rest of the piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0213-28.htm