Yesterday, thousands of protesters expressed their indignation and dissatisfaction with the current government–and the political class as a whole–by peacefully surrounding the Spanish parliament in Madrid. Protests continue unabated today; follow events live on MásPúblico. Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! have the details on the events of yesterday: Thousands of people surrounded the Spanish...
Read more »
The work of Conlon Nancarrow, experimentalist composer and Lincoln Brigade veteran, will be featured in an extensive program at UC Berkeley to mark the fact that he was born 100 years ago. Details here, tickets here, highlights below: Join us for Nancarrow at 100, a three-day centennial celebration honoring the life and work of...
Read more »
This past Friday, the United States' Justice Department disclosed the names of 55 individuals who are currently being detained at Guantánamo Bay, approving them to be transfered to other countries. According to the New York Times, "the government’s move has no immediate, practical effect on the inmates’ detention," and "inclusion on the list...
Read more »
Hershl Hartman writes: IB fighters remembered in Secular Yom Kippur program Since 1973, progressive Secular/cultural Jews — including many intercultural families — in Los Angeles have marked yonkiper/Yom Kippur (day of purgation/atonement) in an alternative observance in which personal reflections are combined with social concerns, and poetry replaces prayer. Reflecting our general anti-fascist heritage...
Read more »
"A former Guatemalan soldier accused of being involved in a 1982 massacre during that country's civil war was extradited Friday to California where he faces immigration fraud charges," the Associate Press reports:
José Sosa Orantes was brought to the U.S. from Canada, where he fled after American officials began investigating allegations that...
Read more »
Our friends at the IBMT write with the sad news of the passing of IB veteran Lou Kenton. Born on 1 September 1908 in the East End of London, Lou was a print worker and prominent anti-fascist before the start of the Spanish Civil War. He arrived in Spain in July 1937 on...
Read more »
Esperanza Aguirre, arguably one of the most important Spanish politicians in recent history, announced her resignation on Monday, due by and large to having been diagnosed with breast cancer. Aguirre, 60, served in the Spanish government for over thirty years, including a run as the head of the Spanish Senate. According to the...
Read more »
This past weekend marked the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. Nancy and Len Tsou, intrepid photographers, were there to document. See their images here.
Read more »
According to Público, Spain's Ministry of Justice has created an archive in which one may access information about the 4,400 Spaniards who died in concentration camps in Austria and Germany during the Second World War. The database will provide names, dates of birth and death, and any relevant historical documents related to the...
Read more »
Santiago Carrillo, the historic leader of the Spanish Communist Party, has died. He was 97. An English-language obit from El País can be found here. See also coverage from MásPúblico and Público.
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