NO.122
T H E T R U S T Y S E RVA N T
the brink of pouring through, and the
others all sped off in a powerful car. That
left Steer and The Times in sole possession
of the story of the fall of Bilbao. It would
test all his powers of endurance.’
‘At eight-thirty in the evening [on
15th June], Steer was at the Deusto bridge
over the Nervion, a few hundred yards
west of where the Guggenheim Museum
now stands. Shrapnel was bursting
overhead and men were firing uphill at
the enemy. Their commander ordered the
Asturians back into line, but a man
stepped out of the ranks and shot him
dead. Steer was among a company digging
up cobblestones to make trenches and
barricades when six Heinkel 51s came
over the ridge and plunged down full
throttle at them. …. Steer wrote:
“Standing on the hard wide road, we
loosed off two hundred rifles and machine
guns at them. Ah, what a memory.”’
‘In his introduction to The Tree of
Gernika Steer says he uses “we” and “our”
because it was usual for journalists in
Spain to refer to the side they were
working on, adding: “It is not to be
inferred from my use of these terms that I
participated in any way in the struggle.”
What we know about his character
suggests that this statement is
disingenuous. As the Heinkels swooped
by the Puente de Deusto, George Steer
was utterly at one with the Basques, and
having the time of his life.’
Nick Rankin at George Steer’s bust
Most memorable of all was Nick’s
translating an interview with Luis Iriondo,
now 94 and a survivor of the bombing
nearly 80 years before. This happened in
Guernica itself, where we duly visited the
bronze bust of George Steer in the centre
of the town, erected in his memory in
2006, the political climate having taken
its time to settle sufficiently after Franco’s
death in 1975 for any earlier memorial.
From San Sebastian (surely one of
the food capitals of the world), we strayed
over the border into France for part of the
morning, spent in St Jean de Luz in the
Pays basque, before returning to the
Basque Country, driving up to Biriatou,
where Steer saw the first battles from the
other side of the Bidasoa river from
Hendaye, where Hitler and Franco met at
the railway station in October 1940. On
the return journey, we were treated to a
top-quality exhibition match of jai-alai,
the fastest of the many variations of the
game of pelota.
As for the trip itself, we started in
Bilbao, staying in the
Carlton Hotel in
which the Basque
Government had its
HQ during the Civil
War. Nick Rankin,
our inspirational tour
guide, gave us an
excellent introduction
to Basque culture and
the Civil War on the
first evening and
various talks ensued
throughout the
remaining five days.
94 year old survivor, Luis Iriondo, with Nick Rankin in the air-raid shelter
13
On our final day, en route for the
airport in Bilbao, we diverted into the
mountains to Elgeta, south-east of
Durango, to visit the scene of a
particularly brave and successful defence
on 20th – 23rd April 1937 by Pablo
Beldarrain, the most competent and
quietly inspirational of the Basque
commanders, whom Steer had known. At
the monument, and looking down over
the field of fire just below the remaining
Basque trenches overlooking the valley,
Nick Rankin movingly read a brief
extract from Cecil Day Lewis’s poem,
‘The Nabara’:
They bore a charmed life. They went
into battle foreseeing
Probable loss, and they lost. The tides
of Biscay flow
Over the obstinate bones of many,
the winds are sighing
Round prison walls where the rest are
doomed like their ship to rust –
Men of the Basque country, the Mar
Cantabrico.
Simple men who asked of their life
no mythical splendour,
They loved its familiar ways so well
that they preferred
In the rudeness of their heart to die
rather than to surrender …
Mortal these words and the deed they
remember, but cast a seed
Shall flower for an age when freedom
is man’s creative word.
It would be very easy to visit the
cities of Bilbao and San Sebastian and
enjoy them to the full, yet without quite
appreciating what lies beneath the
surface: the Basque pride in their heritage
and culture, and the history of their fight
for freedom in those turbulent times in
which Steer became so embroiled. We
were all most fortunate to have had the
privilege of benefiting from the unique
insight that our journey gave us.
A pdf version of the tour booklet is
available at
http://wincollsoc.org/news/publications
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