Gernika and more walking

The Gernika Peace museum https://www.museodelapaz.org/ is motivated by and mostly about the bombing of Gernika in 1937 by Franco and his German allies. Drawing this atrocity to international attention was helped by Picasso’s famous painting, a copy of which in ceramic form is now displayed on a wall in the town. (Gernika is the Basque name for the town; it is Guernica in Castilian.)

Since the museum has a theme of peace and reconciliation the exhibition relies heavily for its impact on personal stories, although there is also some background history of the town and its politics.

We did a nice little circular walk in the Urdaibai natural park, taking in sea and beach views, woodlands of several kinds and some villages, around a hill called Altxarre (PR-BI-161). This is the view we had of Mundaka across the estuary from Laida. (Taken using my phone which managed to do something clever with HDR and make the village look like a painting rather than a photo).

The following morning, on the way to Bilbao we went to Mundaka itself and watched the surfers try and make the most of the famous left hand river mouth wave.