BARCELONA, SPAIN.- Spanish historian and philosopher Javier Tusell, 59, died after a long battle with leukemia. He is credited with negotiating the return of Picasso's "Guernica" to Spain. He was born in 1945. He wrote more than 30 books on different subjects. He was also history professor at universities in Madrid and Barcelona.

In 1981 he was director of the National Heritage of Spain and led the negotiations of the eturn of the Picasso's "Guernica." The work had been at the Museum of Modern Art in New York since 1939. The work portrays the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica during the 1936-39 Spanish civil war. It symbolized the brutality of European fascism.