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The flight took off on September 9, 1981 from the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and landed at 8:27 a.m. the following day at

Madrid Barajas

, without the 319 passengers or part of the 19 members of the crew knew of the valuable merchandise that accompanied them in the warehouse. What did it consist of? In the

Guernica

of

Pablo Ruiz Picasso

, who had remained for more than four decades in the New York museum MoMA.

Today marks another 40 years of that adventure aboard an Iberia flight, the 0952.

Picasso's canvas

(7.77 meters by 3.49) flew rolled up and packed in a huge wooden box in the warehouse of the Jumbo Lope de Vega (EC-DLD), a

Boeing 747

airplane model

(with capacity for 404 passengers) with which the airline covered its long-haul routes.

Commissioned by the Spanish Government

Few times had such a wait been experienced, that of one of the most emblematic pictorial works in the history of art,

Picasso's

Guernica

.

The work was commissioned by the Government of Spain from the Malaga artist for the Spanish Pavilion at the

International Exhibition

in Paris in 1937.

Image of the Madrid airport during the arrival of the painting.

After more than four decades exhibited at the

MoMA museum

in New York (at the express wish of the artist), on September 9, 1981 the painting traveled from the John F. Kennedy International Airport to Madrid-Barajas on the regular

Iberia

flight

0952.

The flight landed at 8:27 a.m.

Once on the ground, the plane's commander, Juan López Durán, informed the passengers over the public address system with the following message: "

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Madrid

. I have to tell you that you have been accompanying Picasso's Guernica on his return to Spain. ".

Memories of the crew

Isabel Almazán and Beatriz Ganuza were two of the

flight's cabin crew

and they relate how they lived it.

This is how they remember their experience.

"I felt very lucky when I saw the great

Guernica

at the MoMa in New York. More exciting was when, upon arriving in Barajas, they told us that we had transferred the painting

from New York

during the entire flight

. And even more exciting was when we opened the doors and there were so many people waiting for us.

At that moment I was aware of the important moment that we had lived

", recalls now, 40 years later, a proud Almazán.

The 'Guernica' at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid.

For her part, her partner, Beatriz Ganuza, assures that when they reached the ground, "the captain announced that we were taking the

Guernica

with us and there was

a great ovation

from the entire plane, 309 passengers."

The

Casón del Buen Retiro>

(linked to the nearby Prado Museum) was the first destination of the oil painting and where it remained until 1992, the year in which it was transferred to the Museo Nacional

Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

in the Spanish capital, where it remains in the present.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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