Return of the Last Exile

"Bienvenido! trumpeted Diario 16, a Madrid daily, in joyous welcome. To the applause of hundreds who had gathered at Madrid's Barajas Airport, Iberian Airlines Flight No. 952 touched down safely at 8:30 one morning last week with its priceless cargo. Stepping from the plane, Spanish Culture Minister Inigo Cavero emotionally proclaimed: "The last exile has returned home today."

The jubilant occasion was the repatriation of Guernica, Pablo Picasso's stark protest against the savagery of war, which had come to symbolize Spanish hopes for democracy. Picasso had been commissioned by the Republican government of Spain to paint the mural for the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 International Exhibition in Paris. The

Spanish civil war had already begun, and when German bombers supporting General Francisco Franco's fascist forces leveled the Basque town of Guernica, Picasso made the act the theme of the painting. After Franco's forces won the war, Picasso--who never returned to Spain as a protest against the Franco dictatorship--decreed that Guernica not be delivered to Spain until "public liberties" had been restored. Picasso died in 1973, two years before Franco.

In June, Picasso's lawyer and heirs agreed that Spain was now sufficiently democratic to meet his wishes. Under tight security, the painting was transferred from New York's Museum of Modern Art, where it had hung since 1939, to Madrid's Prado Museum. Ironically, one of the 20th century's most passionate protests against violence will have to be protected by special bulletproof glass. Guernica will be formally unveiled on Oct. 25, the centenary of Picasso's birth.

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