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A row has broken out between the Madrid and Basque regional governments in Spain<\/a> over the latter\u2019s request for Guernica, probably Picasso\u2019s most celebrated work, to be housed temporarily in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao to mark the 90th anniversary of the bombing of the Basque town.<\/p>\n The work has hung in the Reina Sof\u00eda museum in Madrid since 1992 and repeated requests for it to be moved to the Basque Country have been refused.<\/p>\n The latest request has seen Isabel D\u00edaz Ayuso, Madrid\u2019s outspoken, conservative president and Aitor Esteban, leader of the Basque nationalist party, trade insults, each accusing the other of being \u201cprovincial\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt makes no sense for everything to be returned to its origin,\u201d Ayuso said. \u201cIn that case we should send all of Picasso\u2019s works to M\u00e1laga,\u201d referring to the city where he was born.<\/p>\n \u201cIt represents a provincial mindset when culture is universal,\u201d she said, adding the Reina Sof\u00eda insisted moving Guernica risks damaging the work.<\/p>\n Esteban retorted that if anyone was provincial, it was Ayuso whose idea of national identity \u201cis to drink beer on the terrace of a bar\u201d, a reference to the Madrid president\u2019s insistence on keeping bars open during the pandemic.<\/p>\n Imanol Pradales, the Basque president, asked, \u201cDoes the Spanish government have the courage to move Guernica? They dragged Franco out of his tomb and aren\u2019t capable of moving a painting from Madrid to Euskadi [the Basque region]? The ball is in their court.\u201d<\/p>\n The Basque government wants the painting to be hung in the Guggenheim from 1 October until 30 June to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica.<\/p>\n Picasso\u2019s black-and-white masterpiece depicts the violence of the attack carried out by the Italian air force on April 26, 1937, during the Spanish civil war. Italy was an ally of the Spanish general Francisco Franco and the attack was an early experiment in what would soon become a commonplace of warfare: the aerial bombardment of civilians.<\/p>\n Estimates of the number killed in Guernica vary widely, from 126 to 1,654, but in any case Picasso\u2019s work became an international symbol of the horrors of war.<\/p>\n He painted it shortly after the event and it was exhibited at the Paris International Exposition in 1937. After that it toured Europe and the US and, as Picasso opposed its return to Spain during the Franco dictatorship, for many years it was hung in the Museum of Modern Art<\/a> (MoMA) in New York.<\/p>\n In 2000, the Reina Sof\u00eda turned down a request from MoMA to borrow Guernica, saying \u201cthe great icon of our museum must remain, without exception, separate from the policy on lending works to other museums\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n