PABLO Izaguirre was a 10 year old altar boy, 60 years ago, when German planes flew over Guernica on a sunny April morning to bomb and destroy his town.
It was market day, and hundreds of people from nearby farms and villages had joined the 7,000 local people and dozens of refugees from the fighting, then only 15 km away.
No one will ever know exactly how many were there, but estimates of the death toll range from 500 to 2,000.
"There was tension in the air and we had been given the day off school," Mr Izaguirre says. "The Republicans were retreating and the fighting was very close."
Guernica was completely undefended; no air raid shelters or anti aircraft posts and only one small machine gun emplacement.
The rudimentary look out consisted of a hilltop post where two soldiers were supposed to wave a flag if they saw an approaching plane.
Mr Izaguirre and a friend had climbed the church tower and at around 1.30 pm. saw a waving flag. "We began to chime the bell to warn the people. But no one really knew what to do. The bombing began a couple of hours later and continued until almost 7 o'clock. Everything was on fire."
With no air defences, the planes were completely unopposed. Wave after wave of Heinkels, Junkers and Messerschmitts swept across at low altitude some so low we could have hit them with a catapult" - dropping high explosive, incendiary and shrapnel bombs and machine gunning terrified people as they tried to escape.
In April 1937 Spain was nine months into its bloody civil war. No one knows who ordered the bombing, or why Guernica was chosen as the target. Suggestions that the Condor Legion bombers, fighting on the Franco side, tried to destroy the small arms factory on the edge of the town have been discounted, not least because the Nationalists were to use it when they marched in only four days later.
Eduardo Vallejo, Guernica's current mayor, was equally dismissive of the idea that they were trying to bomb the Renteria bridge only 8 km away.
"It had no strategic importance," he says. "And the river is so shallow that any troops could wade across."
The town of Guernica is sacred to the Basque people. Its ancient parliament house and oak tree, which escaped the destruction, date back centuries. Guernica is our Vatican," the mayor explains. "As Catholics go to Rome, Muslims to Mecca, so Basques visit Guernica."
Mr Vallejo believes that the bombing was an attempt to break the morale of the Basque people as well as a macabre rehearsal for the German air forces in the second World War to test their planes and the effects of high density bombing on a civilian target."
Only four days after the destruction, Franco's troops took over the town and the question of responsibility has never since been answered.
"For 40 years we could not talk about the bombing. People went to jail for doing so," says a local teacher and historian, Mr Alberto Iturriarte. Although only 36, he remembers hearing whispers as a child, but now openly teaches children about the attack.
This weekend Guernica will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the bombings with solemn ceremonies in the cemetery where many victims are buried. The church bell which Pablo Izaguirre tolled that day and which was rescued from the ruined church will be heard once more in the recently constructed mausoleum.
The German ambassador will represent his country at the ceremonies.
Mayor Vallejo, Pablo Izaguirre and Alberto Iturriarte, like so many of their fellow citizens, want the truth and an admission of guilt from the German government.
The Bundestag recently approved a DM3 million award to Guernica to build a sports complex on an initiative begun a decade ago by the late Petra Kelly.
But that is not enough. Money cannot bring back the dead. They should make a formal apology like the one Japan recently gave to the Korean comfort women'," Mr Iturriarte says.
"Of course we forgive the German people," says Pablo Izaguirre, "but we can never forget."
That is a sentiment I heard echoed dozens of times during my visit to Guernica and one which will be particularly strong this weekend.