James D. Fernández, vice-chair of ALBA and professor of Spanish at NYU, has an op-ed in today's El País commenting on some of the more Kafkaesque chapters of the witch-hunt against Judge Garzón--and the collateral damage inflicted on those who found themselves in the crossfire. Read the piece here.
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ALBA is proud to announce its 2012 teaching institutes for high school teachers, made possible by the Puffin Foundation and donors like you: March 17, 2012: Professional development day in Seattle, co-hosted by the Center for Spanish Studies and the Division of Spanish and Portuguese of the University of Washington, with Anthony Geist, Peter Carroll,...
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Rickard Jorgensen, who has generously supported the development of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade collection at NYU's Tamiment library, writes:
After much work by Mike Nash, Gail Malmgreen, Elizabeth Compa, Evan Daniel, Laura Helton, Julie Kessle, Porsche Martin and Jessica Weglein, the "Randall: Fifteenth International Brigade Photograph Collection" and the "Photograph International Brigades...
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The Basque city of Gernika will be commemorating the 75th anniversary of the April 26, 1937 bombing during the Spanish Civil War with a series of events starting this month. See the full program here (pdf).
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The historian Ronald Fraser, author Blood of Spain, has died in Spain, where he lived. Blood of Spain, Tariq Ali writes in The Guardian, "is a peerless account of the Spanish civil war, carefully constructed from interviews with participants on both sides":
Conducted with a steady and consistently courteous voice, the...
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The Mexican Suitcase, Trisha Ziff’s brilliant documentary about the re-discovery in Mexico of 4,500 Spanish Civil War photographic negatives of Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymour, will be part of the line-up of "Cine México" in Tucson, Arizona, later this month (February 29-March 4). All screenings and events are free and...
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Devastating op-ed in today's New York Times, on the judicial shenanigans in Spain here.
En castellano:
Los enemigos del Juez Baltasar Gárzón finalmente se han salido con la suya. El Tribunal Supremo esta semana declaró culpable al juez de aplicar mal las leyes españolas sobre la interceptación de comunicaciones y le han suspendido de los...
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"The secrets from a vault of moldy documents long covered in bat and rat droppings could soon help to put former top Guatemalan officials behind bars, years after the country's brutal civil war ended in 1996," Mica Rosenberg and Kieran Murray write for Reuters:
Clues found in the millions of police documents...
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In a statement just published, Judge Garzón has expressed his “frontal rejection” of the ruling by his country’s Supreme Court that has sentenced him to an 11-year disbarment. This rejection is based on his understanding that the ruling has been “unjust and predetermined,” employs spurious arguments, and lacking in evidence; he vows to use...
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The Guardian's Giles Tremlett covers the protest meeting in Madrid. More reports in the LA Times, the Daily Beast, the BBC, the New York Times, and the Associated Press. ""It looks like Garzón's enemies got what they wanted," HRW's Reed Brody told Tremlett, "… the criminal prosecution of...
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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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New information about the New Zealand-born Spanish Civil War surgeon Doug Jolly (1904-1983) has emerged following the recent publication of his biography, Frontline Surgeon.
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On September 24, 1945, Dr. Barsky delivered this speech during the Spanish Refugee Appeal rally at Madison Square Garden.
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In 1944, Barsky wrote A Surgeon Goes to War, an 18-chapter memoir of his time in Spain, which was never published but can be consulted at NYU’s Tamiment Library. This is the first chapter.
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Self-effacing and shy though he was, Dr. Edward Barsky’s experience in Spain made him an outspoken activist, tireless organizer, innovative frontline surgeon, and political prisoner. “Eddie is a saint,” Hemingway wrote. “That’s where we put our saints in this country—in jail.”
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The Volunteer is thrilled to honor Dr. Barsky on the fiftieth anniversary of his death.
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For Edward Barsky, political and humanitarian activism were two sides of the same coin. Those who persecuted him begged to differ.
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The time she spent in civil-war Spain loomed large in the life of Martha Gellhorn, the St. Louis-born war journalist. “The truth is that Martha could not stop thinking, feeling, and writing about her Spanish experiences.” “Objectivity bullshit.” That’s what Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998) called the journalism of her day. Her letters to personalities like...
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Among the thousands of Jewish volunteers who joined the International Brigades were many descendants of the Sephardim. What was it like for them to “return” to Spain? Three case studies: Lini de Vries, César Covo, and Samuel Nahman, aka Manny Harriman.
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How the 22-year-old Jewish American dancer Janet Riesenfeld performed flamenco to help raise money for the Second Republic under fascist attack.
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Why did Jawaharlal Nehru, future prime minister of India, visit civil-war Spain in 1938? As it turned out, the triangular relationship between Britain, Spain, and India had deep cultural and geopolitical implications.
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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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