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.
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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...
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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...
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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...
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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,...
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Our friends in the UK at the International Brigade Memorial Trust have just sent us their latest newsletter: 28 pages with articles on the imperiled IB monument in Madrid, a new monument in Scotland, the Crome Memorial debates about Orwell, book reviews, and much more. Read it in pdf here.
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Karl Lewkowicz writes: Goodbye Barcelona, a major new British musical celebrating the International Brigades and marking the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Ebro in the Spanish Civil War (promo here), which had a sellout run in London in 2011, will be celebrating its Spanish premiere on September 26, running through till at least...
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The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) is an educational non-profit dedicated to promoting social activism and the defense of human rights. ALBA’s work is inspired by the American volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Learn more at our website or
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In 2025 the fourth stage of ALBA’s Passport Project wrapped up. The fourth stage focused on volunteers on whom we have very little information to enable a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) search. Most of the volunteers submitted had at least a year of birth to reference. Expectations...
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On the fiftieth anniversary of Franco’s death, the New York Times published an article by Jason Horowitz about the “nostalgia” for Francisco Franco being expressed by a growing number of younger Spaniards, most of whom have no direct experience of the dictator. As is common these days in the Times’ coverage of any number...
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The family of Paul Andrew Mooney (1910-1961) is searching for documentation to substantiate information he provided to his family about serving in the International Brigades. Paul Mooney was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated from Hughes High School in 1929 and attended the University of Cincinnati in 1929, 1935 and 1936. In...
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Teesside, an industrial region in Northeast England that in the nineteenth century grew to be a center of shipbuilding and iron and steel production, spawned no fewer than thirty International Brigade volunteers. Of the nine who were born in the borough of Stockton-on-Tees, moreover, six played leading roles in Spain: five rose to the rank of Lieutenant...
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The first thirty-six Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for Phase IV were submitted December 30, 2024. Phase IV is intended to focus on volunteers on whom we have minimal information. At some point in the future, I plan to resubmit some volunteers who were returned as not found or on whom no information...
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My grandfather (Nana), Suresh, moved to the United States in 1959 as a young man on a student visa pursuing his master’s degree. His parents, my great grandparents, sought value in being ‘foreign educated’ and bringing his education home – to Mumbai, India to run their family business. 2 years after my Nana moved...
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Peter N. Carroll, a respected and prolific writer, poet, and US historian, died after a short illness on September 16, surrounded by his family. He was 80. Born in New York City in 1943 to a secular Jewish family, Peter grew up in the Bronx and Queens, where his father worked as a composer,...
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LA RÉPUBLIQUE -QUOTIDINEN DE COMBAT RADICAL ET SOCIALISTE, February 5, 1938 Foreign Volunteer Arrested On March 27 last, 29 North Americans were arrested on board the boat Sans-Pareil while they were attempting to reach the Spanish Coast. They were sentenced to a prison term for violating the decree of February 18, 1937 on the...
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The “Spanija” series translates selected autobiographical accounts by Yugoslavian and Montenegrin volunteers of their actions in the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ray Hoff used Google translate from Croatian to English and he edited the selections. As this is a machine translation, the idiomatic features of Croatian or Serbian and the translation of names and...
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The Spanija series translates select autobiographical accounts by Yugoslavian and Montenegrin volunteers of their actions in the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ray Hoff used Google Translate from Croatian to English and he edited the selections. As this is a machine translation, the idiomatic features of Croatioan or Serbian and the translation of names and...
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ALBA's project to provide a complete list of the more than 2,800 individuals who left from U.S. territory to fight with the Spanish Republic
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