David Pryce-Jones, writing in the Wall Street Journal, does not find much to praise in Stanley Payne's new Spain: A Unique History:
It is far from obvious why Mr. Payne leaves out much that is familiar and that would have served either to reinforce or to refute stereotypes. ... The...
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New Hampshire's NH Outlook will dedicate part of its weekly program this Thursday to the Lincoln Brigade. More here. Once broadcast, the program can be viewed on demand here.
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Marlene Sidaway, President of the IBMT, writes with sad news:
It is with great sadness that the IBMT announces the death of Penny Feiwel (nee Phelps), the last surviving nurse from the Spanish Civil War. Penny was 101, and died in Bournemouth on the 6th January.
Penny was...
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Geoff Lawes is gathering information on current performances of songs from the Spanish Civil War. He writes:
I have begun a thread on the Mudcat Folksong Discussion site trying to collect a list of people who currently perform Spanish Civil War songs. It is hoped that it might encourage the singing of these songs...
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This week's The Nation features an extensive piece by Dan Kaufman on the Spanish Civil War photography exhibit at the International Center of Photography, "The Mexican Suitcase." The show's stunning, must-have, 2-volume catalog is now for sale at Powell's Bookstore. Purchasing it through this link helps support ALBA...
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Daniel Frontino Elash points out that Nate Thornton appears in the short documentary "Soviet San
Francisco," viewable here.
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Check out politicasdelamemoria.org for updates on events and publications by an important international group of scholars, including Francisco Ferrándiz and Francisco Etxeberria, who study Spanish historical memory, particularly the impact on contemporary Spain of the exhumations of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War.
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Ileana Gadea Rivas sends us "I am an International," a brief oral history based on conversations with Nate Thornton held in 2007 and 2008. Read the pdf here. The article was published in Spanish and English in Words and Silences/Palabras y Silencios: Journal of the International Oral History Association (vol. 5, number 1, November 2009), and...
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Georgia Wever writes with sad news:
Alasdair Fotheringham in today's Independent:
"Did my child die or was he kidnapped?" is something no parent should ever have to ask, and still less so when the kidnappers are the government. But that is exactly the question hundreds of Spanish families are currently demanding that their courts resolve for once...
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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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Adrian Pole’s sharp-eyed and sensitive new book notices what so many historians have missed about the International Brigades: that this army was filled with Spanish recruits. Interactions with everyday Spaniards made up a substantial chunk of foreign soldiers’ days in the rearguard. Due to the high mortality of Brigade units, maintaining fighting readiness demanded...
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Amirah Inglis’s (1926-2015) collection of photographs assembled for her research on Australians in the Spanish Civil War (1987) is posted on JSTOR’s website. The collection includes 119 images varying from pamphlet covers, post cards, to photographs of volunteers who supported the Spanish Republic at home, and of volunteers who went to Spain. Inglis planned...
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After attending the AABI event honoring the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in Madrid, in February 2025, Anita Caref, a retired adult literacy educator, started an antifascist children’s book club.
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Ca-Vostra, a bar-hotel in the historic center of Ibiza Town that the Austrian painter Lene Schneider-Kainer opened in 1933, served for years as a refuge for artists and intellectuals fleeing Nazism—until she herself was forced into exile. Sol Izquierdo reconstructs a remarkable life.
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The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, New York’s Volunteers In the spring semester of 2020, the first thirty-three students completed biographical sketches that were published to a student-built website. Stuyvesant High School teacher David Hanna declared his goal for students to compile biographical entries for each of the approximately 800 volunteers who went to Spain from...
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A new episode of the podcast “Family Secrets of the Spanish Civil War” is now available. In the podcast, which premiered in October 2024, historians Patricia Schechter and Dan Czitrom discuss the impact of the Spanish war on their and others’ families. This episode features the children of Anna and Alvin Warren. Below is a...
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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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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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