New information from military files indicates that Chilean President Salvador Allende--whose remains were recently exhumed--may not have committed suicide on September 11, 1973, the day of Pinochet's military coup, Pascale Bonnefoy reports in today's New York Times:

The file, which was reported by a program on state television Monday night, contains...
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The Guardian's Giles Tremlett covers the controversy surrounding Spain's newly issued national biographical dictionary, in which the biography of Franco was assigned to a well-known apologist for the dictator (a term that said apologist refused to apply to his subject). An increasing number of academics and politicians are calling for a withdrawal...
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Matthew Rothschild, editor of the Progressive magazine, honored Lincoln vet Clarence Kailin in a Memorial Day editorial.
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Last week in Brussels I had a public debate with Jordi Gracia, who holds the chair of Spanish literature at the University of Barcelona, about the nature of Spanish culture during the Franco dictatorship and the place of Republican exiles in Spanish cultural history. The exchange was sparked by Gracia's book on the topic,...
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The legal route for the investigation and persecution of crimes committed by the Nationalist side during the Spanish Civil War seemed to have reached a dead end with the suspension of Judge Baltasar Garzón last year. Yet this week an organization of Italian residents in Barcelona will being a suit for crimes against...
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The presentation last week of a new, monumental biographical dictionary in Spain has raised important questions about the relationship between the State and the projects it sponsors, as well as the persistent strength of Francoist nostalgia among the Spanish Right. The massive, 50-volume project--initiated in 1998 by the conservative government of José María...
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A judge on Spain's national criminal court has issued arrest warrants for military officials from El Salvador who played a leading role in that country's civil war. They are accused of  "meticulously planning and carrying out the killings of six Jesuit priests in 1989," Elisabeth Malkin reports for the New York Times: Read more »

In a slide show to mark Memorial Day, The Nation has published a 1937 letter from a brigadista. See the slide show here (slide 4).
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Leonora Carrington, the last living Surrealist, long-time friend of Spanish Republicans, and later wife of Robert Capa's friend Cziki Weiss, died in Mexico City this week. The Times has a long obituary:

Leonora Carrington, a British-born Surrealist and onetime romantic partner of Max Ernst whose paintings depicted women and half-human beasts floating...
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I’ve been away for some days, and haven’t had time  to catch up with the press coverage of the 15-May movement in Spain.  But one of the messages I found in my cluttered inbox upon my return contained this link to photos of the violent disbandment of the peaceful protesters that took place today...
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