The autonomous government of Catalonia has launched an interactive, online map, in four languages, of all the known mass graves of victims of the Spanish Civil War and Francoism. For the English version, click here.
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The exhibit Tierra y Libertad, 100 años de anarquismo en España, (Land and Freedom, 100 Years of Anarchism in Spain), covers the history of the anarchist movement in Spain on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of its founding. On view in Zaragoza until December 8th, the exhibit is an attempt to do...
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Waiting for Lefty reviews The Trotsky, a Canadian "teen comedy filled with references to the Spanish Civil War";
Leon Bronstein is not your average Montreal West high school student. For one thing, none of his peers can claim to be the reincarnation of early 20th century Soviet iconoclast and Red...
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This December, rock star Sting will perform a free concert at the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, Momento 24 reports, accompanied by other luminaries including Judge Baltasar Garzón, to celebrate the International Day of Human Rights. More here.
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RAPAR, a Manchester Human Rights organization, celebrated the life and activism of Paul Robeson yesterday.
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A vote held on November 8th rejected an local initiative to remove a monument inaugurated by Franco in 1966, in honor of those who died in the Ebro Battle, fighting on the Nationalist side. The motion was proposed by residents of Tortosa and other towns near the Ebro River in Tarragona, in accordance with...
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Clarence Kailin has returned to Spain. At a ceremony in Marça, near Tarragona, his son John scattered the Vet's ashes near the monument to the International Brigades. Amy Goodman, anchor of Democracy Now! and recipient of ALBA's activist award, covered the news in her show yesterday (listen here). See also an article by Jordi...
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In an interview with the Portuguese newspaper Público, Judge Baltasar Garzón, who last week spoke at the Estoril Film Festival, lamented the gradual abandonment of the principle of universal justice on the part of national governments (including Spain and the UK), and defended his 2008 decision to go ahead with the investigation of Francoist...
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Europa Laica (Secular Europe) and over 20 other Spanish associations held a well-attended demonstration to protest against the Pope's trip to Barcelona, under the banner of "We're not coming to greet you!" in Plaza Sant Jaume in front of City Hall on the evening of Nov. 4th in advance of...
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ALBA Board Member Chris Brooks, whose work made possible the online database of Spanish Civil War volunteers who left from the U.S., continues to expand, correct, and fine-tune his massive amounts of information. Follow him on his blog.
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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 the spring of 2024, while cleaning up an old family home, Kate Fogarty came across the typescript of a play about the Lincoln Brigade written by her grandfather, Charlie Nusser, who served in Spain from February to October 1937 and fought in the US Army during the Second World War. Ten months after...
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In this new occasional feature of The Volunteer, whose title is the Esperanto word for “archive,” we will present, translate and contextualize iconic foreign language documents related to the anti-fascist struggle in Spain. If you have a favorite document in a language other than English, let us know!
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A dossier on the lies and deceptions surrounding the Spanish Civil War could fill a library, and it’s become commonplace to underscore the mendacity of the journalists reporting on events in Spain. Still, a careful analysis of the way that major international news agencies covered the war tells a more complicated story.
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The Barcelona-born muralist Roc Blackblock, who started painting walls 25 years ago, takes his inspiration from photography to put the spotlight on historical struggles against fascism, for democracy, and for human rights as a way of intervening in the political present. “Having a good photograph to work from makes a huge difference.”
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On May 3, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice Community received the ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism at a ceremony in New York City. Executive Director Audrey Sasson delivered the following acceptance speech.
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Camp Kinderland was first established 102 years ago by Jewish working-class immigrants who wanted to take their children out of the city’s hot summer streets and, through the camp program and its related Yiddish shul, familiarize them with their progressive Jewish traditions and heritage. Through the years, Camp Kinderland has upheld the principles that...
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Lincoln vet Bill Gresham’s Nightmare Alley cemented his fame as a noir novelist. Yet most of his Spanish Civil War poetry was never published—until now. William Lindsay Gresham (1909-1962), the Lincoln Brigade veteran whose bestselling crime novel Nightmare Alley (1946) inspired two films, was never the same after the Spanish Civil War. He rarely...
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“The past isn’t dead,” William Faulker famously wrote; “it isn’t even past.” The quote came to mind me while attending a remarkable gathering last September in the ancient Spanish town of Azuara, a small community of roughly 500 inhabitants, 40 miles south of Zaragoza (Aragón). Azuara was transformed by the Spanish Civil War. Over...
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The first American to die in the Spanish Civil War was a 47-year-old mining engineer from New York who had married a Spaniard, moved to Madrid in 1933, and covered the 1934 revolution for the US media. As soon as he heard about the 1936 coup, he joined the Republican army. Leo Edwin Fleischman...
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The way we think about George Orwell today was profoundly shaped by the Cold War—and by the groundbreaking work of Peter Stansky, who started writing about him shortly after his death. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in the summer of 1936, Peter Stansky was four years old—and although he lived in Brooklyn,...
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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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