Known mostly for his cosmic surrealist and modernist paintings, a new side of Spanish artist Joan Miró is currently on display at Los Angeles' National Art Gallery. The show, entitled "Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape" will be on display until August 12, and showcases Miró's political works. As sacbee.com reports, "People often...
Read more »
Joining forces with ProPublica, Ira Glass's This American Life recently featured Fredy Peccerelli and Kate Doyle, winners of the 2012 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, in an extensive and gripping piece of reportage focusing on the case of Dos Erres. Dos Erres is a remote farming town in rural Guatemala were more...
Read more »
"How do you bring tolerance and democracy to a country in which a murderous military, which over the years killed some two hundred thousand of its own citizens, is effectively still in power?," the New Yorker's Peter Canby asks in a piece about Fredy Peccerelli and Kate Doyle, winners of the 2012 ALBA/Puffin...
Read more »
Ten men were arrested by Spanish police officers on the suspicion of illegally possessing war weapons, in addition to an array of vintage firearms from the Spanish Civil War and World War II.
Read more »
An article last month about the fate of veterans who fought with the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion by Canadian author Terrence Rundle West has spurred new discussion over whether the Mac-Paps should be honored in Remembrance Day celebrations or if their cause is unworthy of remembrance as they traveled to Spain against the direct wishes...
Read more »
The Abraham Lincoln Brigades Archives celebrated the Brigade's 76th anniversary last Sunday in Berkeley, California by honoring Lincoln Brigader Delmer Berg, and activists Kate Doyle and Fredy Peccerelli.
Read more »
In this 1983 interview with Martha Gellhorn, the renowned journalist, novelist, and war correspondent discusses in great length her views regarding the Great Depression, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Vietnam War, among other human rights-threatening historical events. Throughout the nearly half-hour long conversation, Gellhorn staunchly lambasts the idiocy of...
Read more »
Canción Gitana, an international flamenco dance company, will present a distinctive take on the life of legendary Spanish poet, Federico García Lorca, reports sussexexpress.co.uk. The dance-biography will feature myriad narrators, guitarists, and dancers and will cover the entire scope of Lorca's life, from birth to his tragic assassination by the Phalangists, all in...
Read more »
Is the violent dictatorial conflict in Syria comparable to that of Spain in the 1930s? Over the past week a number of opinions regarding this subject matter have been published on the Internet, including that of international affairs expert Barry Rubin. Stated Rubin in a recent blog post:
In several respects, the Syrian civil...
Read more »
Yvonne Scholten, biographer of the Dutch miliciana Fanny Schoonheyt, are interested in obtaining information on the Dutch Lincoln Brigade volunteer Bart van der Schelling. He was admired as a baritone–he recorded Songs of the Spanish Civil War, a number of them with Pete Seeger. In later life he acquired a reputation as a primitive painter. He and...
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