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The Gernika-Lumo Town Council has launched an international campaign to collect signatures to ask the Spanish Ministry of Culture to transport Picasso's most famous painting for display in Gernika. For this, the council has developed www.guernicagernikara.net website, which encourages citizens to support the initiative to sign the petition. The goal is to reach half a million signatures. Also two separate channels have been created on

Facebook and

Twitter, to support the campaign.

April 26, 2011 will mark 74 years since the bombing of Gernika in the midst of the Spanish Civil War. The 'Guernica' painting is on display today at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, and though it has traveled to other museums in the world, museum directors say they cannot transport it now.

Pablo Picasso's painting reveals the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. The Malaga-born artist painted this picture to denounce the aereal bombing and the slaughter perpetrated in Gernika in 1937 by Nazi Germany's aviation. Picasso uses symbols and images of people who are broken and suffering, with most of the faces looking up to the sky where destruction has rained down upon them.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Arguably Picasso’s most famous work is his depiction of the German bombing of Gernika (Guernica in Spanish) during the Spanish Civil War--Guernica. This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war. Asked to explain its symbolism, Picasso said, “It isn’t up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.”

Guernica hung in New York’s Museum of Modern Art for many years. In 1981 Guernica was returned to Spain and exhibited at the Casón del Buen Retiro. In 1992 the painting hung in Madrid’s Reina Sofía Museum when it opened.

The city of Gernika is also the site of one of the sacred Basque oaks: Gernikako arbola

The Gernika-Lumo Town Council has launched an international campaign to collect signatures to ask the Spanish Ministry of Culture to transport Picasso's most famous painting for display in Gernika. See www.guernicagernikara.net