On April 26, 1937, in a small Spanish village, hundreds of civilians were brutally massacred by Fascist and Nazi forces at Francisco Franco’s behest. It was one of the first bombings of civilians by a military air force. That village was Guernica, the spiritual capital of Basque liberties.

The chosen day was a market day. With the town full, carnage ensued. Church bells rang to warn of imminent attack. Heavy bombers released their payload, flattening the town. Incendiary bombs followed, setting it ablaze. Fleeing villagers were strafed with machine-gun fire from low-flying aircraft.

Guernica was a crime against humanity, an indelible stain on Spain’s soul. Had it been for Franco the world would never have known.

Franco not only ordered the massacre of his own people but then embarked on an elaborate cover-up. His troops cleared the area of bombs and evidence incriminating him. He refused to let in observers. He denied any involvement.

Worse still, he blamed the Basques for burning down their town. His forces planted petrol tanks around the town to incriminate the Basques. Luis Bolin, Franco’s propaganda chief, took journalists on a tour of the town once bombs had been cleared and false evidence planted.

Franco’s version of events became the dominant narrative. Journalists wrote up stories to support it – some because they were deceived, others because they wanted to believe and others because they formed part of Franco’s propaganda machine.

While the massacre was horrific, Franco’s lies inflicted the greatest and most lasting trauma. That we know about Guernica at all is thanks to George Steer, a London Times journalist who, against all odds, published photographic evidence and interviews of what really happened in Guernica. The atrocities of Guernica were immortalised in Pablo Picasso’s famous masterpiece.

Guernica’s tragedy is not simply the death and destruction but the subsequent distortion of the truth and Spain’s failure to acknowledge its guilt.

Malta is living its own Guernica. The brutal assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia was an attack on Malta’s spiritual capital of liberties. Picasso’s Guernica, depicting a severed head and arm, could well represent Caruana Galizia’s brutal dismemberment.

Labour went into overdrive to deflect blame. Stories were planted from Castille claiming the murder was related to oil smuggling. Journalists were coerced or deceived into publishing decoys, as Saviour Balzan admitted.

Labour resisted a public inquiry. Only a Council of Europe resolution forced the government to establish one, despite Rosianne Cutajar’s shameless protestations. The inquiry board was subjected to harassment and intimidation. Robert Abela repeatedly threatened the board.

For Labour, its only mistake was not clamping down hard enough to stifle the truth- Kevin Cassar

Then deputy police commissioner Silvio Valletta, husband of a cabinet minister, sat on the FIAU and was close friends with the alleged mastermind. He was  leading the investigation. It took court action by the family to remove him. Neither Valletta nor his wife disclosed his intimate friendship with Yorgen Fenech.

Viler than the assassination and its cover-up was the Franco-like orchestrated campaign by Labour to blame her own family for the assassination. Labour blamed her son for leaving her car parked outside.

Our own Generalissimo, Robert Abela, accused her children of obstructing the investigation. He attacked them for having the cheek (għandhom l-ardir) to accuse the government of hostility. He informed the family that he did not need any “prejudiced advice” from them. They could keep their advice, Abela scowled.

It was, allegedly, then police commissioner Lawrence Cutajar who was obstructing the investigation by leaking information to the middleman, behind the investigators’ backs. Chris Cardona, then a minister, was allegedly providing inside information to the suspected murderers. The accused and the middleman were forewarned about their arrest. The alleged mastermind was kept constantly informed with a copy of Il-Koħħu’s pardon and secret Interpol dossiers on the bomb suppliers.

Keith Schembri is alleged to have passed on documents to Fenech incriminating Cardona. He tried to deflect attention by stating that Caruana Galizia had written about Adrian Delia and that the inquiry should delve into the Nationalist Party’s links to her murder.

Joseph Muscat admonished the inquiry for not investigating previous Nationalist governments’ responsibility for her murder. A request to name a hall in parliament after the assassinated journalist was refused by Labour’s stooge, Speaker Anġlu Farrugia, on the pretext of “eroding impartiality”. The European Parliament had no such qualms.

Picasso’s masterpiece was not exhibited in Spain but at the Paris Exposition Universelle. Picasso was no traitor for exposing his country’s heinous crimes abroad. But those who sought justice for Caruana Galizia at the Council of Europe were mercilessly demonised by Labour’s propaganda machine.

Like General Franco, Labour denies involvement. But its fingerprints are all over the place. And not for the first time.

When Raymond Caruana was brutally gunned down, Labour not only denied its involvement but framed an innocent man, Pietru Pawl Busuttil.

The Nationalist Party was behind Caruana’s murder, Labour accused. And they swiftly executed an evil plan. Labour’s state police planted the murder weapon in Busuttil’s farm and then proceeded to accuse him of murder. Three decades later they’re still at it.

Like Steer, intrepid journalists exposed our very own Guernicas. If it were up to Labour, all would be covered up and others blamed.

For Labour, its only mistake was not clamping down hard enough to stifle the truth, an error it has vowed not to repeat and which it is working hard to correct with punitive measures on NGOs, journalists and critics.

In Picasso’s Guernica it is a woman who shines a light on the macabre scene of chaos and murder. Caruana Galizia is that woman in Malta’s Guernica, shining a blazing light on the dark evils Labour denies.

Like Picasso’s woman, she symbolises freedom, floating down to rescue the embattled people.

Labour refuses to acknowledge and apologise for its atrocities, shielding perpetrators of crime and framing the victims for those crimes.

It took Spain over 40 years to allow Picasso’s Guernica to return home from exile and to acknowledge its guilt. But only after Franco and his fascist regime expired.

Kevin Cassar, Professor of surgery and former PN candidate

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