Gernika(k) in Contemporary Basque Feminist Literature

Abstract

This article approaches the representations of the bombing of Gernika and Picasso’s painting in 21st-century Basque feminist literature. The objective is to delve into the re-semanticizations of the bombing, as well as the functions they serve. Four novels by contemporary Basque authors Miren Agur Meabe, Garazi Goia, Irati Elorrieta, and Alain Agirre, short stories by Eider Rodríguez and Goiatz Labandibar, and a poetry collection by Ixiar Rozas make up the corpus of texts to be analysed. The reading of the works reveals that it is a critical memory that prevails, that is, a remembrance that, rather than an updated historical or pictorial description of the massacre, aims to analyse the influence it has had on the lives of Basque men and women, as well as to highlight the presence and prevalence of Picasso’s painting in explaining critical life moments of the protagonists in the fictions. The article delves, especially, into the importance of the concept of motherhood to make a reading that seeks to denounce the gender politics that has governed both the historical narrative of the conflict and its pictorial representation.