Current Affairs: Super Depor of La Segunda

Super Depor of La Segunda

The canny A Coruña club has made it back to soccer’s top flight after just a year



By El País

Deportivo La Coruña on Sunday secured promotion to Primera División after just one year in the second tier. The Galician club came back from a goal down to beat Huesca 2-1 and equal Valladolid’s record of 88 points in a single season in Segunda.

The achievement is a triumph for coach José Luis Oltra and for a top-quality, big-budget squad led by Juan Carlos Valerón and a host of other veterans.

It is also a triumph for club president Augusto César Lendoiro. A man with something of the gambler about him, he has overcome risk and gotten results by moving in the margins. A year ago, many thought they saw him turn pale when, looking tearful, he took in the reality of the first relegation of his quarter-century reign. The club was facing debts of 100 million euros and an alarming drop in the squad’s quality. People speculated that this was the beginning of the end for the great Blues and Whites.

Lendoiro, however, had a few aces up his sleeve. The first had to do with the insurance payment for the relegation. Lendoiro fought tooth and nail for a common club compensation fund in marathon meetings with half of the Spanish soccer world. It led to a split with Atlético Madrid, Sevilla and Villarreal, which all saw it as a capitulation to Real Madrid and Barcelona over the issue of TV rights. Now Villarreal is in Segunda without having signed up to the fund. Depor, meanwhile, received 10 million euros to compete at a level where the total budget of 19 of its rivals did not even reach that amount.

Money is no insignificant matter at a club where half of every euro earned goes to the taxman to cover debts. But Lendoiro put all his chips on the table and went for broke.

He also sensed that Depor wouldn’t make it back to Primera without fans. He lowered the price of season tickets and also offered reduced tickets to club members’ friends and relatives. When the season had only just started, Depor hosted Guadalajara on a Saturday afternoon in a stadium as full as those on the big Champions League nights of yesteryear. It was then Lendoiro knew Depor was on its way back.

That just left the soccer. Among the first decisions after the trauma of relegation was to hand the reins of the team over to Oltra, a young coach who had worked at two clubs that had also gone down, Tenerife and Almería. But before that he had taken the Canarian club up and narrowly missed out on getting promotion for Ciudad de Murcia. He carried with him an aura that Lendoiro saw as an intrinsic value to the environment.

“In A Coruña they like quality soccer,” he said at the presentation of the new coach. “It would be difficult to understand anything else when the strong man is Valerón.” The 36-year-old playmaker had had a residual role under previous coach Miguel Ángel Lotina in a team designed to fight to stay up. Under Oltra he has become a leading figure both on and off the field.

Valerón was an ace Lendoiro could count on. Other players seemed lost, but Lendoiro spurned a lukewarm transfer market and maintained the spine of the team: Daniel Aranzubia, Diego Colotto, Andrés Guardado and Riki. No tempting offers for them arrived, but neither did Lendoiro look likely to pay them any attention if they did because he was clear that he was going to keep going for another year spending like a Primera club.

And when the market closed he left Oltra with a Ferrari parked at his door: a team that in wages alone cost over 18 million euros and a club that had 45 million euros to compete against rivals such as Almería, with an 11-million budget; Valladolid, 10.5 million; and Celta, nine million. Depor paid its players four times the budget of Alcorcón, the opponent that gave it the most trouble during the campaign, scoring three goals in 15 minutes.

The correction came in a rather fortuitous way. Oltra has shown two characteristics: he finds it difficult to make changes, but if a player comes on and responds he earns a place. Aythami and Jesús Vázquez were substituted for Zé Castro and Juan Dominquez and, by coincidence or not, the team changed.

Finance&Economics: Inditex to be Spain’s most valuable group

Inditex to be Spain’s most valuable group



By The Financial Times

Inditex, owner of the Zara clothes brand, is set to overtake Telefónica to become Spain’s most valuable listed company as market turmoil shaves billions from the capitalisations of the country’s more established corporations.

The Galicia-based retailer, 59 per cent owned by its founder Amancio Ortega, Spain’s richest man, briefly overtook the telecoms operator on Monday, according to Reuters data. Both groups were valued at €43.12bn on Tuesday morning.

The news came as Spain reported its worst monthly retail data, with April sales down 9.8 per cent on the year before. Last month was the 22nd consecutive fall in retail sales.

Listed on the Madrid stock exchange in 2001 at a price of €14.70, Inditex shares on Monday closed at €69. The group has been one of the few large Spanish listed companies to continue to increase in value, rising 10 per cent in a year.

Telefónica shares have lost 43 per cent of their value in a year as the company has struggled with difficult trading conditions in its home market and net financial debt of €57.1bn, prompting credit rating downgrades and a dividend reduction.

Banco Santander, Spain’s largest lender by assets, is third in the Ibex 35 with a value of €42.6bn, having dropped 44.7 per cent in a year in a reflection of concerns over the impact of mounting property loan losses across Spain’s banks and elevated borrowing costs.

Inditex, which is now the world’s largest clothes retailer by value, last year opened 411 new stores globally – more than one a day – as net profits increased from €1.73bn to €1.93bn and net sales rose 10 per cent.

The reshuffling at the top of Spain’s corporate sector comes as companies have been scrambling to emphasise their international operations, predominantly in Latin America, as profits at home collapse.

Both Telefónica and Santander generate the bulk of their revenues away from Spain, with the latter reporting €7.5bn of revenues in Latin America in the first quarter compared with €1.67bn in Spain.

Finance&Economics: 'Will my money be safe?' ask customers in Madrid banks

Spain reeling over financial fears: 'Will my money be safe?' ask customers in Madrid banks

Spain's economy was battered by a storm of bad news this week. And in Madrid, city traders and worried savers are asking where it will end.



The Telegraph

The man's voice was scarcely a whisper, but the urgency in his tone was unmistakable.

"Will my money be safe here?" asked the customer, leaning over the counter in a central Madrid office of troubled bank Bankia.

The weary-looking cashier nodded. "Things are better now," he said quietly.

As Spain reels from a week of plunging stock markets and eurozone nightmares, everyone in the country – and beyond – will be hoping that the cashier was right.

On May 9 the government took over Bankia, the country's fourth-largest lender, in an attempt to dispel concerns over the bank's ability to deal with losses related to the 2008 property crash. Bankia is itself a clumsy conglomeration of banks with serious exposure to bad property debt.

Shares in the Bankia plummeted 30 per cent at one stage in trading on Thursday, following a report that customers had withdrawn €1bn in deposits since the Madrid government was forced to part-nationalise the bank.

Bankia released a statement in the afternoon saying that the deposit fall was simply a seasonal effect rather than a bank run. This served to stabilise the share price, but the lender still ended up losing 14 per cent of its value.

It rallied on Friday, but the bad news kept on coming.

The central bank announced late that evening that the level of bad loans on the books of Spanish banks was at an 18-year high, fuelling concerns about the financial sector in the eurozone's fourth-largest economy.

Then the finance ministry said late on Friday that the deficit could reach 8.9 percent of GDP after four of its 17 regions overshot their expected budgets.

And with Greece looking ever more likely to drop off the cliff and exit the eurozone, it is now Spain which has the unwelcome distinction of being in the centre of the euro firestorm.

As world leaders met at Camp David in the United States this weekend, Greece was officially on the agenda. But Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, was well aware that he too was in the spotlight.

"Sentiment towards Spain is deteriorating with each passing day, mainly because of a loss of confidence in the Rajoy government's approach to tackling the problems in the banking sector," said Nicholas Spiro of Spiro Sovereign Strategy.

Credit ratings agency Moody's carried out a sweeping downgrade of 16 Spanish banks on Thursday, including Banco Santander, the eurozone's largest bank.

Outside one branch of Bankia, on Madrid's main street, Gran Via, there was a mixture of anxiety and resignation.

"It's quite scary," said a 25-year-old television producer, who didn't want to give her name. "Some of my friends are moving their money to other banks, or even other countries where they feel safer, like Germany. But I haven't really got any savings, so I'm not worried," she added with a shrug.

"I don't understand any of it," said another elderly customer exiting the bank, flinging his hands up in the air in despair.

Others were more philosophical.

"My money is even safer in here than before, now that it is backed by the government," said Eduardo, a 45-year-old advertising executive. "My wife said we should think about moving our money, but it's all irrational fears. The government won't let it all collapse." Certainly Madrid is yet to show the outward signs of economic turmoil which blight the streets of Athens. Businesses are still open, the infrastructure is not crumbling, and the "indignados" protests against austerity measures were, last week, decidedly feeble.

What is new over the past year is the number of hawkers clad in fluorescent yellow tabards prowling the street offering to buy gold. As Spanish unemployment rises to 25 per cent – a eurozone high – with half of all young people out of work, many families are resorting to selling the family jewels to keep afloat.

At Bankia's headquarters – a huge glass skyscraper in Plaza Castilla, north of the centre, there were few people in the office on Friday afternoon.

"Many of them leave at 3pm on Fridays," the security guard said. A few besuited bankers with shiny shoes strode past, anxiously checking their Blackberries, but the black marble lobby with its bronze bust of the King was eerily quiet.

Around the corner, Arandio bar was doing a roaring trade – the discarded paper napkins and bread crumbs on the floor testimony to a thriving evening's trade.

"The bankers still come here, despite the crisis," said one waitress. "Our Friday happy hour beers are only a euro. So even they can afford that."

Most were unwilling to discuss the situation, preferring to sit outside in the sun and talk about anything but the crisis. Yet others were deep in conversation, huddled around their tables with furrowed brows, some biting their nails.

"I think there is a lot of worry about," said one financier, standing at the bar. "It's like a dark cloud hovering over us and no one knows what is coming next."

Fears about contagion from Greece have pushed Madrid's stock market to 2003 levels.

Behind the bar loomed a second huge Bankia building, designed by Norman Foster and bought by Caja Madrid – one of the banks now part of Bankia - for €815 million in 2009. At 250 metres tall it's the highest building in Spain.

And it is empty. Security guards sitting inside the vast lobby said that a few people worked in the building, but it is a powerful symbol of how Spain's property boom (construction on the tower started in 2004) has led to its current economic crisis.

Further down the Paseo de la Castellana, inside Spain's stock market – housed in a neoclassical palace – five or six traders leant against the pillars, looking at screens. The trading is done online now, but some of the more old fashioned traders still like to come in and work from there.

The world markets were in turmoil, but the screens kept on flickering in silence.

The traders just stood with their hands in their pockets and watched.

Outside, a beggar sat with a sign: "I am 54 years out of work and unemployed. Please help. Don't laugh – it could be you."

Finance&Economics: White Elephants on Parade: The Unloved New Castles in Spain

White Elephants on Parade: The Unloved New Castles in Spain




By TIME

The City of Arts and Sciences rises from the edge of Valencia's center like a modern-day Xanadu. Designed largely by native son and internationally renowned architect Santiago Calatrava, its marvelous collection of spiny, bleached white buildings has been a major tourist attraction in this Spanish port city ever since it was inaugurated in 1998. But more recently, the complex has lost some of its luster. Thanks to the crisis and, more recently, to an opposition party's campaign against Calatrava and the regional government that contracted him, the gleaming City of Arts and Sciences has become a symbol of the excess of Spain's go-go years. And it's hardly the only one of its kind.

From cultural centers to transportation hubs to sporting arenas, large-scale urban projects like the City of Arts and Sciences were some of the showiest results of Spain's boom. As the economy prospered in the late 1990s and early 2000s and E.U. money flowed into the country's coffers, municipal and regional governments invested in flashy projects designed to draw attention and — it was hoped — tourist dollars to cities far from the hubs of Madrid and Barcelona.

The origins of the craze for lavish provincial construction lie with the Guggenheim. When the New York City–based contemporary-art museum opened a branch in Bilbao in 1997, it transformed a decaying, postindustrial city into an artistic epicenter — and one of the major tourist destinations in Spain. It hardly mattered that the museum's own collection was minimal; Frank Gehry's breathtaking, titanium-clad building, beached like fantastical treasure ship on the banks of the Nerua River, drew 1.4 million tourists in its first year, a full million more than expected.

It wasn't long before other cities wanted to cash in on this so-called Bilbao effect. "For a lot of places, it seemed like a simple formula," says Llàtzer Moix, author of Arquitectura Milagrosa, a book that investigates Spain's infatuation with large-scale urban design. "Plan a cultural center. Get a star architect to build it. And voilà." Ignacio Blanco, spokesperson of the opposition Esquerra Unida (United Left) and a member of Valencia's regional parliament, well remembers the enthusiasm of his colleagues across the aisles for the City of Arts and Sciences when it was originally proposed. "Instead of worrying about education and health care, they wanted the glamour," he recalls. "They said it would put Valencia on the map."

To an extent, the formula worked. In 2011, regional president Francisco Camps announced that the complex had brought in some 40 million tourists since it opened, and the complex has indeed become the most readily identifiable sign of the city. But visibility alone does not mean success, especially in times of economic crisis. The Valencia project came in four times over its original budget, and its final unit was not completed until 2005.

And it's hardly alone. The Oscar Niemeyer International Cultural Center, a massive exhibition and performance space designed by the Brasilian architect for the northern Spanish port city of Avilés, ceased programming less than a year after it was inaugurated in March 2011. After decades of planning, Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain finally inaugurated its City of Culture, a Peter Eisenman campus, containing a museum, a library and a performance space, in January 2011. Yet the eventual $500 million spent wasn't even enough to finish the complex: the city ran out of money before completing two of the six planned buildings. "The crisis hit, and they didn't have any choice," says Anxo Lugilde, Galicia correspondent for La Vanguardia newspaper. "They had to stop construction."

Nor is it merely cultural projects that have felt the pinch. During the boom years, Spain massively expanded its transportation network, building new high-speed rail lines and opening airports in provincial capitals in the hopes of attracting low-cost carriers like Ryanair and easyJet. Whether this new infrastructure was needed seemed almost beyond the point; cities like Lleida, located just two hours' drive from Barcelona, or Ciudad Real, two hours south of Madrid, invested millions of dollars in building their own. "In the Western world today, war isn't military, it's economic," says Moix. "So during the boom you had a competition between cities to see who could capture the most weekend tourists. Whether it was sensible for every provincial capital to have its own museum or its own airport didn't really factor into the equation." Indeed, since the start of 2012 two such airports — Castellón's in the region of Valencia and Ciudad Real's in Castilla–La Mancha — have seen all their commercial flights canceled. Both airports now stand empty.

But in a year in which the Spanish economy is expected to contract 1.7%, bailout pressures are growing ever stronger, and each week seems to bring word of a new cutback, that a herd of white elephants are no longer going unremarked, especially in Valencia. Late in April, Esquerra Unida announced that, after years of trying to gain access to the region's accounts, its representative Blanco had finally seen the government's bills for the City of Arts and Sciences. The first week of May, it launched a website exposing those costs. Translated loosely as "Calatrava Bleeds You Dry," Calatravatelaclava.com site alleges that Valencia paid the famed architect €94 million ($120 million) for the City of Arts and Sciences alone (it also paid him for several other projects), and that he received preferential treatment despite the fact that he charged more than other architects. "He also avoided paying Spanish income and value-added taxes," says Blanco. "Because even though he has an office here that oversaw the construction, he billed from his office in Zurich."

In a statement released to the press, Calatrava did not refute the amount of his billing, but noted that his accounts had been carefully audited, and that they were "from the first contract, correctly adjusted to the quality and volume of the work." In an interview with TIME, his lawyer Francisco Vega rejected the charge of impropriety. "Santiago Calatrava left Spain for Switzerland in 1975 for school, and has lived there ever since," Vega says. "He doesn't pay Spanish taxes because he doesn't live in Spain. He pays Swiss ones, which I dare say are higher." Vega is investigating the possibility of bringing charges against Esquerra Unida for defamation.

But Blanco says that the architect is not his real target. "We're not against Calatrava. We're against the politicians who allowed this kind of excess." In Valencia's case, that excess still costs an estimated $896,000 a year in maintenance and upkeep — a quantity increasingly difficult for a city that recently had to sell $635 million worth of short-term bonds at rates higher than Greece's. Perhaps that's why Lugilde's words ring true there. The journalist was speaking about Santiago de Compostela's City of Culture, but his words apply to any number of other white elephants in Spain. "People criticize it by saying it was an accident that got out of hand. But in some ways, it's the perfect monument — a monument to the bubble, and to our misuse of funds."

Current Affairs: Spain's most indebted village

Spain's most indebted village pays the price of its profligacy

In the Spanish country just East of Madrid stands the village of Pioz, popuation 3600, which has the dubious titled of most indebted place in the troubled country.



By The Telegraph

The new brick houses stand by the dozen, in neat rows which stretch across the sun-drenched hillside. Each has its own walled garden, solar panels on a terracotta tiled roof and space for two cars to park in the driveway.

Closer to town beneath the ancient ramparts of a 15th century castle once home to the aristocratic Mendosa family, is the municipal swimming pool, constructed four years ago to provide residents with a haven on those hot summer days.

With views across the plain to the distant snowcapped mountains north of Madrid it is promoted as a rural Spanish idyll.

But a closer look here reveals the banners offering the property deal of a lifetime are fraying at the edges and weeds are encroaching across the patios of houses they surround.

There is also a silence in the streets for the simple reason that hardly anyone lives here – all but two of the development of 100 homes stand empty.

And the pool? It is lined with a film of green algae which floats on stagnant water that won't be cleaned in time for the hottest months – because the council coffers have run dry.

This is Pioz, the town in the Guadalajara province of Castilla-La Mancha which has now earned the unwanted distinction of being the most indebted in Spain.

In fact with its projected income, Spain's Ministry of Public Administration estimates that Pioz will take 7,058 years to repay itsdebts thanks to mismanagement and a vast programme of overspending during the boom years when credit flowed and developers stampeded to put up housing estates they could never realistically hope to fill.

While eyes across Europe focus on Greece and the political turmoil that threatens to derail it, Spain's government has been working to restructure its banking sector and reassure markets that the nation won't need a bail-out.

It is in the small towns across this country that the real story of Spain's troubles can be found.

Pioz has become the symbol of a crisis-hit nation where town councils have run up debts that far surpass their income, debts which threaten to derail the government's attempt to meet strict budget deficit targets set by Brussels.

"We are crippled by debt," explained Dionisio Torres Martinez, the spokesman of Pioz town hall. "It is impossible to exaggerate how big our problems are here. In the short term we are just struggling to find the funds each month to pay for the very minimum of services, let alone meet our debt repayments."

It is a tale of hubris and mismanagement that echoes across all of Spain. Where once the fictional Don Quixote tilted at windmills, the administrators in this corner of Castilla-La Mancha had embarked on a far more damaging madness.

Some three miles from the historic centre of this town of 3,800 residents a gleaming water purification plant squats between fields of wheat.

"It looks great doesn't it?" remarked Juan Yunta Ayllon, the town councillor in charge of Public works, Services and the Environment for Pioz, surveying the site.
"And so it should. It came with a bill of 11 million euros and yet do you see anyone there, any sign of life within its gates?"

The place is abandoned because the council has no money left to operate the electricity pumps to supply the plant or to the pay the employees to run it, as a result the water supply to the town frequently cuts out.

A recycling centre next door, funded in part by a grant from the European Union, likewise stands gleaming and vacant. "We couldn't finish the road to allow the trucks to reach the site with the rubbish. The whole project is useless."

So too is the swimming pool which was opened in 2008 and came with a price tag of 2.3 million euros. "There is no money, not a spare cent, to spend on maintenance of such a luxury," explained Mr Yunta.

At night the street lighting is not switched on, road maintenance has been halted and rubbish collection is intermittent.

The town owes 16 million in outstanding bills to suppliers and is one of 2,619 councils applying to the central government for help to meet repayments.

The current mayor, Amelia Rodriguez, from Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative Popular Party, was elected last June and inevitably blames the previous socialist administration for running up the unsustainable debts.

"We are just trying to cope with what we have to do now to survive," she said. "But the number of residents just cannot supply the income needed to run a town that has expanded so quickly and now lies half empty."

The town suffers 25 per cent unemployment, the national average, and at best estimates it could put aside 2,000 euros a year to pay outstanding debts after meeting just the bare minimum of running costs.

"Yeah, life was good here. It's a beautiful place," says Ignacio, a man in his 30s, who arrived in the town square on a battered old bicycle. "I had two cars, a new house, lots of work in construction and I thought it would never end. Now I'm unemployed and live with my parents again."

Its empty houses – an estimated 600 new builds lie vacant – are gradually being looted, an expression of discontent by the town's unemployed youth and opportunism by itinerant thieves.

On one urbanisation at the far end of Pioz, all the electrical wires have been ripped from the properties, their shutters and windows stolen and the bathroom and kitchen fittings gone.

Many of the construction companies that built the new estates are in liquidation and the banks have been left with toxic assets of properties they are unlikely to ever sell, even at rock bottom prices.

The spectacular bust in 2007 of Spain's decade long building boom has left troubled banks burdened with an estimated 185 billion euros in problem loans and assets.

On Friday they were ordered by Mr Rajoy's government to set aside another 30 billion euros to shore up loans on top of a 54 billion euros fund ordered in February.

"It's all very well the government rescuing banks with public money," said Eugenio Rodriquez Barco, another resident of Pioz remarking on the part nationalisation of Bankia, Spain's fourth largest bank, last week. "But we need to a plan to bail out the town halls as well otherwise Spain will collapse."

The picture for the country appears bleak and the figures speak for themselves.

Spain has slumped into a second recession with its economy predicted to shrink a further 1.7 per cent this year. Its government has slashed public spending, cutting budgets by 27 billion this year, in a desperate attempt to reduce its public deficit to 5.3 per cent this year from 8.5 per cent in 2011.

The government is struggling to convince Brussels and the markets that it can meet the harsh demands of the eurozone's other finance ministers to save itself from following the fate of Greece, Ireland and Portugal and asking for an international rescue. More protests loom against stringent cuts in health and education as well as public sector pay and a freeze on pensions and the number of jobless threatens to rise beyond the 5.6 million Spaniards currently seeking work. Alarmingly, more than half of Spain's 18-25 year-olds are unemployed.

Silva Barrios, a 45-year-old resident of Pioz, said she worried most for her daughter's future. "She is 18-years old and just starting her adult life but what hope is there for her? There is no work here so she will mostly likely move abroad. It's very sad."

As austerity measures bite across the country, for those in Pioz some local cut backs go just too far.

The annual bullfighting fiesta, the jewel in the crown for many a community across Spain, has been cancelled this year and seems unlikely to be reinstated for the foreseeable future.

"I've been through some bad times over the years let me tell you," said elderly resident Sergio, sipping a beer at the bar on the town's square. "But to cancel the fiesta? I never thought in my lifetime that things could get so bad as this. Let me die now from the shame of this disaster we have created."

Edward Hugh, an independent economist based in Barcelona, said: “Spanish debt is reaching critical levels and the country is going to have a terrible time complying with measures imposed in Brussels.

“We need to see a clean up across the board and what Spain’s population don’t quite seem to understand is why these swingeing cuts are needed. There is a danger of it spiraling out of control."

“To put it simply,” he added. “You can’t fix this mess with chewing gum and chicken wire.”

Current Affairs: Gernika - 75 years on

Gernika - 75 years on

- The Basque town was bombed by the Germans during the Civil War
- Debate still rages as to whether the civilian deaths were deliberate
- The number of survivors of that fateful day is dwindling fast




EL PAÍS

Around 4.30pm on April 26, 1937, a joint squadron of 23 German and Italian planes appeared in the skies over the historic, and undefended, Basque town of Gernika. Over the next five hours they would drop a total of 22 tons of high explosives and incendiary devices that would burn for days, destroying 70 percent of the town, and killing and wounding 1,600 people - around a third of the population.

Gernika became a powerful symbol of the atrocity of war. Unknown to the people of the town, they had been slated by General Franco and his fascist allies to become guinea pigs in an experiment designed to determine just what it would take to bomb a city into oblivion. Franco knew that the large number of outsiders attending the weekly market had swelled its population that day.

Three-quarters of a century later, the only survivors of the attack were children at the time, and they have carried the horror of what happened with them all their lives.

"I still get very emotional when I think about that afternoon," says Andone Bidagueren, who was aged eight at the time. "I can't help it."

The Civil War had broken out nine months earlier, and cities such as Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia had already been bombed. Rumors had already begun to spread that Gernika's famous marketplace might be a target. Andone says that his mother rose early that day, heading for the town to sell milk. Around 4pm, she returned home. While he helped her with the empty milk churns, they heard the sirens ring out.

"We all ran off in different directions. Of my six brothers and sisters, three of us headed for the river. We thought that it would be the safest place," he says. The three hid in the water long after the bombing stopped, returning home only after dark. They heard their parents calling for them. "If the planes come back, we'll all die together at home," Andone's father told them.

Andone stayed in the town after the bombing, meeting her future husband, the son of a baker, the next day. But many other residents fled to France, among them Javier Alberdi, aged nine, and Luis Iriondo, aged 14. They returned a year later after Franco's forces had occupied Gernika, and along with around 200 or so other survivors, have remained there ever since.

Others never returned to Gernika, such as Francisco García San Román, aged seven, and his two brothers, who moved to another town. But they will be in Gernika for the commemorations of the bombing.

Aware of the risk of bombing, the municipal authorities had built air-raid shelters, and stationed lookouts atop the hills surrounding the town. They were to signal to other lookouts in church towers, who would ring the bells in the event of an attack. These steps undoubtedly saved many lives.

"When we heard the alarm bells, my cousin and I ran into the woods covering the hills," says Javier Alberdi. "We didn't stop until we reached the hermitage of Santa Lucía, about a kilometer-and-a-half from the town. When the bombing stopped, we went to one of my aunts. About three hours later my mother arrived," His wife Estibaliz Bidaguren, then aged six, says she remembers little: "All I can remember is being very angry with my father - I blamed him," she says. "I was a little girl and I didn't understand anything."

As would happen 50 years later in the Balkans, when Serb forces targeted Sarajevo's library, Franco and the Germans deliberately set out to obliterate Gernika's identity by dropping incendiary bombs, which would destroy the city's cultural and historical identity.

Gernika is the cultural capital of the Basque people, the seat of their centuries-old independence and democratic ideals. It had no strategic value as a military target. A few years later, a secret report to Berlin was uncovered in which Von Richthofen, the World War I fighter ace who commanded the Condor Squadron that led the attack, said: "...the concentrated attack on Gernika was the greatest success," making the intent of the mission clear: it had been ordered on Franco's behalf to break the spirited Basque resistance to his Nationalist forces. Gernika had served as the testing ground for a new Nazi military tactic: carpet-bombing a civilian population to demoralize the enemy. This would be put to terrifyingly effective use two years later, when Hitler invaded Poland.

As part of the commemorations, a group of historians has set about locating and interviewing the survivors of the bombing. In 2010, the Gernika Gogoratuz association brought out a book that recorded the testimonies of some 22 survivors. Since then, eight have died.

Luis Iriondo was alone when the bombers struck. "I found a shelter in one of the four bunkers that had been built in the town square. I can't remember how many of us there were. It was dark and I could hardly breathe. We ended up lying down so as to get more air," he says.

This year, Andone Bidaguren will go to the local cemetery and lay flowers at the memorial built in 1995 to remember the victims of the bombing. "I tell my grandchildren that this is something we should never forget."

On April 24, 1999, 61 years after the attack, the German parliament formally apologized to the citizens of Gernika for the role the Condor Legion played in bombing the town. The German government also agreed to change the names of some German military barracks named after members of the Condor Legion. By contrast, no formal apology to the town has ever been offered by the Spanish state on behalf of the Franco regime that ordered the attack.