From Graham Keeley in Barcelona

GEORGE STEER, the journalist for The Times whose report of the German bombing of Guernica outraged the world and inspired Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece, is honoured today in the Basque town where the massacre happened.

Exactly 69 years after the Luftwaffe Condor Legion squadron attacked the civilian population of the Basque town on a busy market day, a bronze bust of Steer will be unveiled and a street named after him.

As part of the build-up to the 70th anniversary next year, the Basque authorities wanted to remember the journalist whose report brought the news of the massacre to the world.

Underneath Steer’s bust, in Basque, Spanish and English, are the words: “George Steer, journalist, who told the world the story about Guernica.”

Calle George Steer is finally to become a street name in the ancient capital of the Basques after a 25-year campaign by a group dedicated to reminding the world of the horror that was unleashed by the German bombers.

Steer, who was covering the Spanish Civil War for The Times, was among the first journalists to reach Guernica just hours after more than 1,600 civilians were killed by the bombing and subsequent firestorm on April 26, 1937.

He waited to find proof that the Nazis were responsible before filing a report on the attack: three small bomb cases stamped with the German Imperial Eagle.

At this point, Nazi Germany had signed the Non-Intervention Pact and German troops were officially playing no role in the war.

But Steer’s report uncovered the lie. It read: “Guernica was not a military objective . . . the object of the bombardment was seemingly the demoralisation of the civil population and the destruction of the cradle of the Basque race.” It appeared in The Times, was syndicated to The New York Times and went round the world.

When Picasso, who was in exile in Paris, read the news he was outraged and changed a canvas that he was preparing for an exhibition.

The result was Guernica, the black-and-white painting that has come to symbolise the horror of war.

Every year, the authorities in Guernica mark the anniversary of the bombing, remembering the dead at the cemetery in the town.

After the ceremony, the bust by a Romanian artist, Septimiu Jugrestan, 23, will be unveiled.

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