On September 18, the Argentine judge María Servini de Cubría requested the extradition of four Franco-era officials accused of torture. The order is the first arrest warrant issued for those suspected of committing crimes against humanity during Spain’s forty-year dictatorship since the country passed an amnesty law in 1977. The four accused are Jesús Muñecas...
Read more »

“The United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances will visit Spain from 23 to 30 September 2013,” according to a press release from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: During the official visit, the UN experts will examine the measures taken by Spain on issues related to the prevention and eradication...
Read more »

The Spanish Truth Commission Platform, a broad coalition of organizations that include the International Garzón Foundation and ALBA, has released a compelling new video to increase awareness about the lack of judicial support for the victims of Francoism.
Read more »

Now available for pre-order: Letters from the Spanish Civil War by Ohio volunteer Carl Geiser, introduced and edited by Peter N. Carroll and Fraser Ottanelli. From the publisher, Kent State University Press:

Letters from the Spanish Civil War provides a unique perspective into the motivations that led...
Read more »

Now online: highlights from a Concert for the International Brigades held in Logroño, Spain, on 30 April 2013. Co-sponsored by the International Brigade Memorial Trust, the concert featured the Spanish and British musicians who played at the IBMT's annual commemoration in London’s Jubilee Gardens in July 2012.
Read more »

We have just received news that Carlos Blanco Aguinaga passed away on September 11. Born in the Basque city of Irún in 1926, Carlos Blanco fled with his family across the French border in September 1936, when he was ten years old, and was later exiled to Mexico, along with twenty thousand other Spanish...
Read more »

Milton Wolff, last commander of the Abraham Lincoln battalion, marveled that it took him more years to write his memoir of the Spanish Civil War (Another Hill) than it took him to fight in it. For a “little war” (both in duration and scope) that war has had immense consequences and attracted immeasurable interest.
Read more »

A 25-minute video by Marshall Mateer of the IBMT Annual Commemoration at the International Brigade memorial in Jubilee Gardens, London, on 6 July is now on the IBMTnews channel on YouTube.  This year is the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Ebro, which was fought mainly in Catalonia, and a strong Catalan theme runs...
Read more »

From Spain we have received the sad news of the passing of Gervasio Puerta, vice-president of the Asociación de Amigos de las Brigadas Internacionales (AABI), who dedicated his entire life to the struggle for justice and against fascism. As a fifteen-year old boy, Gervasio lied about his age in order to join the Republican...
Read more »

Samuel Basterra writes with a a request for help: Fausto Villar was a Spanish 19-year-old conscripted into the Spanish Civil war in 1937, assigned to the international Fifteenth Brigade. He felt a profound admiration for both Robert Merriman and Edgar James Cody. Fausto Villar chose to remain with Merriman when he died on the morning of April 2,...
Read more »