The Spanish government has announced plans, La Jornada reports, to turn the Mexico-City house in which renowned surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel (1900-1982) spent most of his post-Civil War exile into a culture-historical center that focuses on Buñuel's work but also allows for Spanish-Mexican artistic collaboration more generally. Buñuel's move from the US to...
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Kirkcaldy, Scotland. (Map.) Erected by Kirkcaldy District Council and Friends of the IBA, May 1980 and September 1986 (IBMT). More on NamesOfTheFallen. Recent Photos by Jack Deighton here.
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The first in a new series of posts highlighting monuments to the International Brigades worldwide. Canberra, Australia; S 35° 18.012 E 149° 07.201 (map). Inaugurated in 1993. From Waymarking.com:
The memorial is a wall of sandstone blocks with red brick courses. ... The bronze map was made by Dr Ross...
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Patrick Skene Catling, writing in the Irish Times, critically reviews a new biography of the man who worked with Willi Münzenberg and Arthur Koestler to organize the International Brigades, and who is said to have inspired the movie Casablanca:
Otto Katz (1895-1952) was a Stalinist agent of first-magnitude international stardom. He...
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In a strongly worded op-ed piece in today's Público, Carlos Jiménez Villarejo, former Chief Prosecutor for corruption cases, chides the Spanish Supreme Court for the cavalier way in which it recently dismissed Judge Baltasar Garzón's appeal. (More background here.) According to Jiménez, the Supreme Court should have given much more serious consideration to...
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Alex de la Iglesia and Carolina Bang speak to Little White Lies about the Balada triste de trompeta, which just won several prizes in Venice and is now showing at the San Sebastián festival:
Everybody in Spain has a father or grandfather who was involved in the war. Everybody...
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The Telegraph published an obit of the SCW vet classicist yesterday:
Though left for dead in a pool of blood, he somehow managed to make it to a dressing station, his will to live miraculously restored by the appearance of the journalist Claud Cockburn with a bottle of scotch.
MoreThe Times' Edward Rothstein writes about Nueva York, 1613-1945, in which ALBA collaborated and for which James D. Fernández has curated an accompanying exhibit which opens today:
Instead of viewing the city and its past along an East-West axis and seeing its conflicts and culture through interactions with...
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La Colonia: Spanish Immigrants in New York, 1898-1945, a photography exhibit curated by ALBA Board member James D. Fernández, and co-sponsored by ALBA, is opening this Friday, September 17, at 6:15pm at NYU's King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center (53 Washington Square South).
In the early decades of the twentieth century, New York experienced a substantial influx...
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Judge Baltasar Garzón Real, who has been suspended from his post at Spain's National Criminal Court for his investigations of possible crimes against humanity committed under the Franco regime, has been honored with the Hrant Dink Award, named after the prominent Armenian journalist who was assassinated by a Turkish nationalist in January 2007....
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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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