ST. PETERSBURG, January 16. /TASS/. Trees symbolizing freedom and democracy in the Basque Country will be planted in St. Petersburg as part of the Russian-Spanish "Oaks from Guernica" project to honor the Spanish soldiers who defended the city of Leningrad during World War II, Stanislav Vyazmensky, manager of the St. Petersburg Regional Information Center of TASS, curator of the Russian-Spanish TASS project to commemorate the memory of Spanish soldiers who fought in Leningrad in 1941-1944, told a press conference at TASS.
Currently, the seedlings of the oak tree, an image of which was immortalized in an anti-fascist painting by Pablo Picasso, have already been delivered to St. Petersburg from a nursery in the city of Guernica - they are located in the Botanical Gardens of Peter the Great.
"Now the oak tree seedlings are already in quarantine at the Peter the Great Botanical Gardens. They have traveled a long way. We have another stage of work ahead of us: along with specialists from the city's landscaping committee, we have to identify those points in the archipelago of blockade memory where it is possible and important to plant these oaks. We need to choose this place very carefully," Vyazmensky said.
According to him, each sapling has an official certificate in which the president of the general assembly of Biscay attests that the oak is a legitimate direct descendant of the Guernica tree. The trees, which Peter the Great was also very fond of, can withstand the harshness of the northern climate - they will be grown on their own in a greenhouse for two years. As the president of the association "North - Children of War of the USSR" (Vitoria, Basque Country) Yelena Aleksandrova noted, back in the 14th century all the envoys of the Basque Country gathered under the tree of Guernica, where the first laws were laid down, where kings swore allegiance to the people. That is why during the years of Franco's fascist regime the oak tree was destroyed as a sign of democracy, as a symbol of resistance.
"It is a great project. Frankly speaking, we want to expand it, we want to go big. We want to honor the memory not only of those Spaniards who defended our hometown of Leningrad, but also to plant such oak trees in other places in Russia," she said.
After the Soviet Union refused to return children evacuated during the civil war to Franco's regime in 1939, many young Spaniards remained to live in Leningrad. More than 60 Spanish youths volunteered for the front and fought for Leningrad in the ranks of the 3rd Frunze People's Militia Division.