Mallorca en llamas

Before Guernica, Mallorca had already experienced the terror of aerial bombardments. In the summer of 1936, the island became the first place in history where the civilian population was systematically attacked from the air. The Republican air force carried out 46 raids in the first month of the war to force the surrender of the rebel authorities. Although the targets were military, bombs also fell on working-class neighborhoods and commercial areas. The people of Mallorca discovered that no one was safe in modern warfare: children, women, and the elderly could die in the most horrific ways. This book recovers, for the first time, the human story of the victims of those attacks. Using previously unpublished primary sources, the work gives names and voices to innocent civilians—including 32 women and 17 children—whose memory was ignored and, in many cases, silenced. This essential work not only reconstructs a key episode of the Civil War but also fulfills the moral and legal obligation to recognize, provide redress, and restore dignity to all victims, regardless of which side they fought for.