Manuel Gonzales in Picasso's Atelier

Manuel Gonzales in Picasso's Atelier 2009

One aspect of Manuel Gonzales telling the story about his father to the children bears out a simple fact. Whenever children are lied to but someone is willing to tell them an authentic story, then they are willing to listen. For they know this without really knowing but more sensing that it will have many ramifications for their future lives. This is how they gather in important voices in their lives as they grow older and begin to understand the world from different angles. One of the many ramifications can be formulated as a question: will there still be around in their later life a free press to report truthfully as to what is happening, or will everything succumb to a new forms of propaganda? How to detect the subtle lies, how to distinugish the story of a true victim from a that of a perpetrator who can clothe himself as if a victim? Those experiences have been made in Belfast where redemption work is linked to telling truthful stories but which depends in turn upon not manipulating one's memories. That is why Jürgen Habermas supposes the difficulties of reconstructing the past is that it is nearly impossible. Hence the need for historians and those who preserve in archives the true stories. A part of this is also the way Picasso painted his response to what happened in Guernica. It was a response which did not follow suit any prescribed ideological demand to portray the story only for the sake of the Left or for that matter to appease the Right. Picasso went in between and so does the story by Manuel Gonzales.

One of the biggest revelations in this story made possible by Manuel's account is about the crucial role of the journalist Steer. He happened to be in Guernica at the time of the bombing and who reported to the world as to what really happened. His article contradicted thereby the propaganda of Franco who wanted to blame the Left for the bombardment.

Manuel Gonzales

There exists invaluable documentation about this evacuation of children from Guernica in 1937. It is said altogether 32 000 children were taken away from their parents and families, two hundred came to Ghent. It included Manuel's father and his brother. The parents told them to stay together when they departed and did so until Ghent. There the two brothers were separated since taken in by two different families. For two years neither one of them knew where the other brother was since the families feared they would like to leave in order to join the other. By accident they met two years later while walking with their respective families in the streets of Ghent. They discovered then to their amazement that they were living just a few streets over from one another. Manuel mentions this fact because his father never overcame this 'trauma of separation'. This documentation was shown along with a specially made film once Ghent did one year later a Kids' Guernica action with two murals being painted, and which were put on public display in a shopping mall on October 10th, one day before memorial day when First World War ended. Connections are made like moral fibres which run through the memories of individuals and their closest friends. The story continues as Manuel Gonzales tells his story as well to other children such as the ones in San Sebastian in 2011. When they heard his story they asked themselves what they would do if they had lost everything like his father back then? It became the motive for their mural.

One of the evacuated children: in 1937 and now in Gent 2010

All the children after their arrival in Ghent 1937, including the father of Manuel.

Children in Picasso's atelier began to ask many questions as they were touched by the story of Manuel's father. Also the way that Manuel tells it and responds to the children shows how much he can convey feelings without imposing. Manuel Gonzales had brought along his two sons, one of whom was doing the photography to take home memories. For Manuel it was equally exciting to be in the very atelier where Picasso had painted Guernica.

"May I ask a question?"

After this discussion between Manuel and the children, they wanted in turn to show him what they were doing. Hence they went to fetch their own sketches and laid them out on the floor in front of Manuel.

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Manuel Gonzales in Picasso's Atelier