It's common to point out mistakes in Wikipedia, but is Encyclopaedia Britannica hundred percent accurate?
Pablo Picasso is described as a "Spanish-born French painter, sculptor" in Britannica Concise Encylopedia -- but not by any of the other encyclopedias cited in Answers.com. They all say he was Spanish.
I found that he was in fact denied French citizenship when he applied for it in 1940 only weeks before Germany invaded France during World War II. He was suspected to be an anarchist.
Picasso sought French citizenship because he apparently feared he might otherwise be extradited to Spain. He could expect no favours from General Franco and the Nationalists who had won the Spanish Civil War whose horrors he had famously depicted in Guernica.
The Nationalists were fascists, in his view, and he did not want to be a citizen of a fascist state, so he applied for French nationality, according to others.
The latter story appeared in the New York Times, the former in the Independent.
Other newspapers and agencies also carried similar reports between 2003 and 2004, when 30 years after his death, police files unearthed in Paris revealed his rejected application for French citizenship.
I came across those reports when I searched Google using the key words, Pablo Picasso, Spanish, French citizenship.
I searched Google to check if Encylopaedia Britannica was right. If Picasso was indeed a "Spanish-born French painter, sculptor", then why shouldn't it be mentioned in Wikipedia or any other encyclopedia? Still, the Britannica is known for its accuracy. So is it correct on Picasso? Have other records appeared since 2003 showing Picasso did indeed become French?
