The tour for friends and family of the Lincoln Vets, organized by Alan Warren, started three days ago. Follow their adventures on the blog:
Our last stop was to the Brigade cookhouse below the monument. This was close to where Frank Ryan and Jock Cunningham rallied the demoralised Brigaders on...
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Len Tsou just shared his images with us:
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The Spanish Civil War and the defeat of the Republic, immediately followed by the outbreak of World War II, pushed hundreds of thousands of Republicans into exile. But the diaspora was not limited to people: archives, too, were dispersed (hence the "Mexican Suitcase")--and so were works of art. Picasso's monumental painting Guernica, the...
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In response to the brief presented last week outlining the third case against Judge Baltasar Garzón, this one related to alleged irregularities in Garzón's order for a wiretap of Valencian politicians involved in a corruption scandal (the subject of a recent editorial in El País), Garzón declared through his defense attorney that...
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"The State fails to comply with international law in order to protect privileges that generated during the dictatorship of which some Spanish social elites still take advantage," said Emilio Silva, the founder of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH), in a chat session with readers of Público today. "The financial support for...
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The most prestigious literary award in Spain, the Planeta, went to Eduardo Mendoza’s latest novel, Riña de gatos. Madrid 1936 (Cat Fight; Madrid, 1936) on Oct. 15th, according to El País.
Eduardo Mendoza competed against 508 other novelists, mostly from Spain and Latin America, to win the 601,000 euro prize.
In his acceptance speech,...
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Today's El País Emilio Silva writes a combative op-ed to mark the 10-year anniversary of the day that volunteers began digging in Priaranza del Bierzo to look for the remains of his grandfather, executed during the Spanish Civil War. Soon after, Silva founded the Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica:
The Edinburgh Anarchists have been kind enough to post a review essay on Scots volunteers in Spain, published last year by Stuart Christie (of Christie Books, which this blog has featured before) in the Scottish Review of Books:
A new and fascinating contribution to Scotland’s role in...
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Gail Dolgin, the associate producer of the Oscar-nominated documentary Forever Activists: Stories of Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, directed by ALBA board member Judy Montell, has died, the Oakland Tribune reports:
Dolgin was a longtime board member of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, a proposal reviewer for...
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The BBC reports:
A plaque with the names of those from Merseyside who lost their lives fighting in the Spanish Civil War has found a permanent home in Liverpool. The memorial, with the names of 27 local people, has been unveiled at the Unite building in Islington. The city's office block has...
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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Targeted by the far right, Rutgers historian Mark Bray and his family went into exile in October. Speaking with The Volunteer from Madrid, he reflects on the current political situation. “Fascism shamelessly takes over institutions that, under liberal norms, are supposed to remain neutral.”
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I. In the Beginning Second child, Bernard, born March 1, 1915 Older brother, my father, Jacob (Jack), born June 3, 1912 Younger sister, Roslyn, born (June 1, 1922) disabled, hospitalized, died February 10, 1942 Their father, Abraham, died March 21,1930 Their mother, Nettie, died April 29, 1953 Bernie Brilliant student, graduated High...
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The title of this new occasional feature of The Volunteer is the Esperanto word for “archive.” In it, we will present, translate, and contextualize iconic non-English language documents related to the anti-fascist struggle in Spain.
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In recent years, citizen groups in Leipzig and Madrid have fought to preserve the buildings that were backdrops in two of Robert Capa’s best-known photographs. Their steadfast dedication has created two sites of historical memory whose significance extends far beyond Capa’s original images.
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On November 8, 1937, Salaria Kea, a 26-year-old African American nurse from Ohio, had been in Spain for seven months and one day. The country was in disarray. Half its territory was controlled by fascist rebels. Cities were being bombed, and civilians were killed by the thousands. Thousands more were forcibly displaced. But Kea...
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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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