At Spanish Cinema Now, James van Maanen saw En el balcón vacío (Jomí García Ascot, 1961), a rarely shown film made by, and about, Spanish Civil War exiles in Mexico City:
A memory piece that shows us a grown women living in Mexico City who travels back to Spain to...
Read more »
Diana Hauk Payne, widow of ALB vet Perley B. Payne, passed away earlier this month. The San José Mercury has an obituary:
Perley had recently returned from the Spanish Civil War when they met at a political gathering. They married in 1939 and lived on a fruit ranch and raised...
Read more »
This past Wednesday, Margot Adler covered the Spanish Civil War photography exhibit for NPR's Morning Edition:
What's fascinating at the exhibit is that you can look at scores of tiny prints on contact sheets, frame by frame and then see what finally appears in photo news magazines like Look, or in...
Read more »
Alan Entin, nephew of Bernard "Butch" Entin, traveled to Spain this fall together with Josie Nelson (daughter of Steve Nelson) and Vaughn Parker, brother of Clinton DeWitt. Alan sends us an article (pdf) about his experience. See here for the travel blog by Alan Warren, the trip organizer.
Read more »
Carol Rosenburg writes in the Miami Herald on the role played by Florida senator Mel Martínez in US efforts to influence Spanish investigations into torture at Guantánamo:
The cause for alarm at the U.S. Embassy was what a U.S. diplomat called a "well documented'' 12-inch-tall dossier compiled by a Spanish human rights...
Read more »
Iñaki Gabilondo interviewed Judge Baltasar Garzón on his last news program for CNN+ last week. Garzón repeated that his conscience is clear, but that there is a considerable likelihood that the cases brought against him, which had him suspended from his post at the national Criminal Court, will end his judicial career in Spain...
Read more »
Director Michael Mann has found his leads for Capa, his Hollywood production about Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, Cinema Blend reports:
According to Total Film, Andrew Garfield has been cast as Capa himself, while Gemma Arterton will play his partner and lover Gerda Taro. The script will reportedly follow the...
Read more »
With the twentieth ratification, the UN Convention against Enforced Disappearance took effect on December 23. The convention defines an enforced disappearance as occurring when authorities deprive an individual of liberty and then refuse to provide information regarding the person's fate or whereabouts. Human Rights Watch welcomed the news:
The...
Read more »
Alexei Barrionuevo reports in the New York Times:
Jorge Videla, a former Argentine dictator, was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday in the murder of 31 political prisoners who were killed after the 1976 coup that swept him into power. Mr. Videla, 85, is considered to have...
Read more »
The autonous government of Madrid has initiated an investigation of the theft of newborn babies who were then given up for adoption, a practice reported to have occurred in the Franco years, El País reports. The parents were told their child had died. The preliminary investigation, which focuses on the 1960s, is meant...
Read more »
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
sign up to receive email updates from ALBA. Support ALBA through a tax-deductible gift! To inquire about a donation, please contact the ALBA office at info@alba-valb.org or 212-674-5398.
The war in Spain was barely over, but the scramble to define the legacy of the International Brigades was on. Were they valiant antifascists, or had they been agents, victims, or dupes of world communism? In pre-1945 US popular culture, the brigadistas were often portrayed as heroic antifascists. At the same time, there were...
Read more »
China was entangled in multiple local and global crises when this image was published on the back cover of a Shanghai-based magazine.
Read more »
The Republic’s fight against fascism was not limited to the trenches. There was also a quieter, though no less vital front—the judiciary—where the Republic fought to preserve legality, due process, and democratic norms.
Read more »
Major US films and series about the Spanish Civil War have been few and far between. Why has Hollywood shied away from a topic that, on the face of it, presents such a trove of compelling stories?
Read more »
Close to 35 years after serving as a head nurse in the Spanish Civil War, Fredericka Martin, by then an accomplished author, returned to Spain to revisit the hospital sites where she had her fellow volunteers had saved hundreds of lives. Another half century later, Gina Benavidez, a doctoral candidate, followed Martin’s trail.
Read more »
Although this text by Ivens is little known—and has never been translated before—it offers an eye-opening reflection on the power of his filmmaking.
Read more »
Antifascism has long been synonymous with American values. In 1934, student activists at New York’s City College arguably understood this better than many do today.
Read more »
After the Nazis occupied the Netherlands, the Seegers family did not hesitate to join the resistance. They had experience fighting fascism: their son Piet had fought for the Spanish Republic. When Tom King started digging into his family history seventy years later, he fell from one surprise into the other.
Read more »
Tina Modotti’s short life took her from Italy to North Beach and from there to Mexico, Berlin, Moscow, and civil-war Spain. Rightly known as a pathbreaking modernist photographer, she was also a radical activist. “Modotti spent the second part of her working life fighting for revolution.”
Read more »
Kirsten Weld has spent years studying Latin American dictatorships and the citizens who fight to hold them accountable. That experience has proven valuable in her current role as president of the AAUP chapter at Harvard, which, in March, sued the federal government for targeting students and faculty—and won.
Read more »
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
Search the Database