Isabel Almazán and Beatriz Ganuza, pictured on Thursday in front of Picasso's 'Guernica' in Madrid's Reina Sofía museum.VÍCTOR SAINZ

The flight attendants who accompanied Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ back from exile

Forty years ago today, Iberia cabin crew Isabel Almazán and Beatriz Ganuza were working on the plane that returned the painting from New York to Madrid. They recount their memories of the experience to EL PAÍS

Antonio Jiménez Barca

Madrid, 10 de septiembre de 2021

Flight attendant Isabel Almazán was 38 years old on that day, and she insists that she noticed that there was some kind of fuss when she boarded the plane in New York. But perhaps it’s an invented memory, created once all the events of that day became known. The plane, a Boeing 747 belonging to the then-Spanish flag carrier Iberia, took off from New York’s JFK airport with a slight delay, at 8.20pm. In many respects, it was a normal flight – just another for the IB-952 route. But at around 8am Madrid time, when the plane was already on the tarmac and headed to its gate, Captain Juan López Durán broke the news.