The students in my undergraduate seminar –“Spain in New York”– and I are in the process of uploading to a word-press blog the results of our research about the history and current presence of Spain and Spanish culture in New York. The recent rally of Spanish ex-pats at the foot of the Washington Square...
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Even for a Spanish news junkie like myself, it is hard to comprehend and convey the significance of the recent massive meetings of citizens in Spain’s symbolic center –the Puerta del Sol in Madrid– and in many other cities in Spain, and now, it seems, around the world. Here’s what I understand of the...
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On Tuesday, May 17th, a group of people gathered at Madrid’s Athenaeum to remember and pay tribute to the heroic men and women who joined the International Brigades 75 years ago.
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Now available for online viewing: the speech that Larry Cox, Executive Director of Amnesty International, USA, gave on Saturday May 14 in New York City on the occasion of the first ALBA/Puffin Human Rights Award for Judge Baltasar Garzón:
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Now available for online viewing: the speech that Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, gave on Saturday May 14 in New York City on the occasion of the first ALBA/Puffin Human Rights Award for Judge Baltasar Garzón:
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In an important victory for transitional justice after 36 years, a court in northern Argentina has sentenced eight ex-army officers to life in jail for killing unarmed activists in the town of Margarita Belén during the military dictatorship, the BBC reports:
Twenty-two people, mostly members of the Montoneros rebel group, were tortured and killed...
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Before Judge Baltasar Garzón received the first ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism this past Saturday May 14 in New York, he was interviewed by Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University Law School. The whole interview (appr. 1h15m) was filmed by David Schwittek and can now be viewed here:
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Len and Nancy Tsou send their slideshow of the ALBA's 2011 New York City celebration and the ceremony for the first ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism. Click here to see the images.
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Earlier today, Prof. Jonathan Turley of George Washington University Law School summarized the main points of his two-hour conversation with ALBA/Puffin awardee Baltasar Garzón:
Garzón stated that the Obama Administration’s use of the “just following orders” defense as well as the protection of lawyers involved in the torture program violated the Nuremberg...
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All the major Spanish papers covered the news of Judge Baltasar Garzón's acceptance of the ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism yesterday in New York City, as well as his conversation with Professor Jonathan Turley: El País, ABC, El Mundo, Público, as well as El Diario in New York.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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