Twenty-four years ago I conducted my only interview with Russell Martin. The author is a triple threat, he writes fiction, nonfiction, and he is a
documentary film maker. During our conversation that day we looked back
at the history of ninety years ago and the Spanish Civil War which
became a prelude to WWII.
If you are familiar with that period, you knight recall that Spain had
recently installed a democratic government and that Gen. Francisco
Franco and his army then overthrew that administration as his fascist
forces took over Spain. He got a lot of support from the fascist regime
of Benito Mussolini in Italy and from the Nazis who were in control of
Germany.
The Germans and Italians enacted the aerial bombing of the city of
Guernica in Spain's Basque region. The near total destruction that had
occurred then inspired the painter Pablo Picasso, a native of Spain,
then living in France, to paint an enormous canvas depicting that
brutal, heart rending annihilation, in his own distinctive style.
