Astra pistols were supplied to Republican Spain and to the Basque government which controlled the plant until the Bombing of Guernica in April, 1937.
Unfortunately the target was missed and a residential area hit instead, resulting in the deaths of 936 civilians, including 209 children, exceeding the civilian death toll of the Guernica raid which modern estimates put at 400.
In the main building there is a copy of the Guernica painting, which illustrates a stylised view of the 1937 Bombing of Guernica in Basque Spain by German and Italian bombers in the Spanish Civil War, in which the artist Pablo Picasso clearly expressed his abhorrence to the military suppression of the Spanish people.
Oklahoma City bombing | 1993 World Trade Center bombing | Guernica | Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial | Guernica (painting) | strategic bombing | Bombing of Guernica | 16th Street Baptist Church bombing | USS Cole bombing | Piazza Fontana bombing | Khobar Towers bombing | King David Hotel bombing | ''Guernica'' painting | Bombing of Podgorica in World War II | 1983 Beirut barracks bombing | Strategic bombing during World War II | Strategic bombing | M62 coach bombing | Islamabad Marriott Hotel bombing | Guernica (town) | German strategic bombing during World War I | Centennial Olympic Park bombing | Brighton hotel bombing | Bombing of Libya (1986) | Bombing of Darwin (February 1942) | Bombing of Bucharest in World War II | Batasang Pambansa bombing | Area bombing directive | 1986 United States bombing of Libya | Wall Street bombing |
When the Spanish Civil War came in 1936, Abe felt no real compulsion to go and fight, until he saw the bombing of Guernica by the Luftwaffe.
It would prove to be a precursor to many of the tactics and methods employed in the Second World War, such as the test bombing of Guernica, which aimed to see how effective bombing of civilian areas could be.