The Spanish historian Ángel Viñas, who was interviewed by the Volunteer last year, summarizes his research findings for the magazine Témpora in a concise new piece on the causes and responsibilities of the Spanish Civil War. Read it here (in Spanish). More on Prof. Viñas’s blog.
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One of the most memorable and original renditions of the Spanish Civil War songs that Pete Seeger made famous were recorded in the late 1960s by the Liberation Orchestra, under the brilliant direction of bassist and activist Charlie Haden. Haden passed away this week.
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On July 9, one month after his 97th birthday, Gert Hoffmann, passed on peacefully and safely at home in Austria. Gert joined the International Brigade in 1938. Upon the defeat of the Spanish Republic he, along with some 400,000 Spanish, crossed the border into France where they found themselves interned on the beaches in...
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Our friends at the International Brigade Memorial Trust have made a slideshow with images of their annual commemoration at the IB monument in Jubilee Gardens, London, last weekend. Click on any image to begin: http://bit.ly/1qJqEMW. Photos by Andrew Wiard.
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The Asociación de Amigos de las Brigadas Internacionales (AABI) has produced an interactive map of the tribute memorials to the International Brigades across Spain. The project in an ongoing labor, and anyone with information on a monument not currently included on the map, is welcome to contribute information and photos through AABI’s website. The map is...
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Seeger Fest, a free five-day celebration of the music and life of Pete and Toshi Seeger will take place July 17 -21 in New York City and the Hudson Valley. Organized by the Seegers’ grandson, Kitama Cahill-Jackson, the festivities will include: concerts, film screenings, boat rides, and a photo exhibit. The strong support and...
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Documentary filmmaker Pamela Yates writes on Facebook: Joyce Horman never gave up on the quest for justice. Seeking justice is justice, and finally the U.S. role in ordering the murder of two US citizens in 1973, Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, is verified by the Chilean courts. The perps are mostly dead – but this...
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“The United States military intelligence services played a pivotal role in setting up the murders of two American citizens in 1973, providing the Chilean military with the information that led to their deaths, a court here has ruled,” Pascale Bonnefoy writes in the New York Times today: The recent court decision found that an American naval...
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From our friends at the IBMT: One of Spain’s leading campaigners for justice for the tens of thousands of victims of Franco’s dictatorship will address the annual commemoration this Saturday (5 July 2014) for the British volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War as part of the legendary International Brigades. Emilio Silva will...
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Franco’s Crypt: Spanish Culture and Memory since 1936. By Jeremy Treglown. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.)
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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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The iconic group portrait of raggedy Lincoln Brigade volunteers that’s become ALBA’s calling card over the years is now finally available in an uncropped, high-res print. When and where was it taken? And who exactly are these 29 men?
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Tina Modotti and Vittorio Vidali, who dedicated a major part of their lives to the Communist International, have long been surrounded by myth. New research by the historian David Jorge suggests that they consistently strove for broad leftist fronts—even when the leadership of the Comintern favored other tactics.
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Leon Bibel, a New-York-based painter, printmaker, and teacher who worked with the WPA and was only discovered by the public years after his death in 1995, was primed from birth to identify with the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War.
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Can conservation be a revolutionary practice? In his new book, The Monument of Tomorrow, Miguel Caballero shows that it certainly can. The story it tells is also the story of the Madrid that the Abraham Lincoln Brigade encountered—and helped shape—during the war.
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Few political leaders of modern Spain have been as maligned as Prime Minister Juan Negrín, who died in exile in 1956. But his personal papers, which have been only open to researchers since 2014, challenge long-standing portrayals of Negrín advanced by anti-Communist critics on both the left and right.
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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...
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China was entangled in multiple local and global crises when this image was published on the back cover of a Shanghai-based magazine.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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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