La originalidad de la participación cubana en la Guerra de España reside en su importancia numérica en relación con la de los países hispanoamericanos, especialmente las islas antillanas de Puerto Rico y de la República Dominicana. En realidad, a la vista de las fuentes consultadas, fueron por lo menos 1.101.
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On March 27, 1938, Avelino González Mallada, former mayor of the Asturian city of Gijón, died in a car crash on a country road in Woodstock, Virginia. The next day, The New York Times explained that “Señor Mallada was in this country on a sixty-day permit granted to him by the Department of Labor after...
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A Spaniard named Carlos Rodríguez del Risco was imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp of Mauthausen from 1940 to 1945. Although he was sympathetic to the Spanish Republic when he went into exile at the end of the Spanish Civil War, he became hostile to the Republican cause during his deportation and imprisonment. He...
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Patience Darton must be one of the few people ever to describe Ernest Hemingway as ‘charming and humble.’ She recorded her impression of him in a letter written from Valencia after meeting him there in the spring of 1937. No doubt he had been pleased to meet an attractive, blonde, English nurse, eager to...
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The great majority of books on 20th-century history treat the period from 1917 to 1991 as one of unremitting rivalry between Soviet communism and Western capitalist democracy, a rivalry suspended from mid-1941 to mid-1945 by the need of both parties to defend themselves against Nazi-Fascist-Japanese military aggression. They say very little, or speak disparagingly,...
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(English version here.) A finales del año 2004 un buen amigo encontró, por casualidad, un grafiti en una pared de la ermita de San Gregorio en el municipio de Aguaviva (Teruel) hecho el día de Navidad de 1937 por el brigadista americano Edward Muscala. Aguaviva es el pueblo donde nació mi padre; aunque mi...
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(Versión en castellano aquí.) At the end of 2004 a good friend of mine found, by chance, a piece of graffiti on a wall in the chapel of San Gregorio in the town of Aguaviva (Teruel). It had been written on Christmas Day 1937 by Edward Muscala, an American member of the International...
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(En inglés.) Si existieran agencias de calificación crediticia que se dedicaran a evaluar el estado moral de las instituciones de un país, ayer “España”, sin duda, habría sido devaluado al status de “bonos basura”. Su Tribunal Supremo abrió el primer juicio de tres contra el Juez Baltasar Garzón, iniciando así su ataque tri-partito...
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Young men volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War for many reasons, but few American volunteers came from privileged backgrounds. When I saw 1938 and Calaceite, Spain, on a list of Williams College men who died in World War II, I was introduced to Barton Carter. The full story of Carter’s radicalization and...
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Part of the difficulty in studying Kea’s life—and what makes her story so intriguing—is that subtle details change from memoir to memoir. Over the last three years, I have travelled to archives in the United States and England tracking down information about Kea, and yet I am still piecing together her story. The process...
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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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Inspirational and courageous; that was the IWW. Click here then the forward arrow to listen as author Ahmed White talks with former ALBA board member Burt Cohen about White’s new book Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers on the podcast keepingdemocracyalive.com.
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Nobody remembers Lloyd Mallan. I came across his name while writing a book on poet- playwright Federico García Lorca’s iconic afterlife. Mallan’s piece on the poet’s assassination, published in 1939, was instrumental in spreading to the U.S. and Canada a highly embellished narrative of poetic martyrdom that helped shape the public image of Lorca....
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ALBA is proud to partner with the Spanish government in the publication of a 60-page curricular guide for high-school students and teachers in Spain as part of a government-sponsored series. Highlighting the experiences of U.S. volunteers in the International Brigades, the guide invites readers to use these stories as an inspiration to set...
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For an English translation of this article, see here.
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On May 30, 1937, the Republican freighter Ciudad de Barcelona was hit by a torpedo fired by a lurking Nationalist submarine. The torpedo tore a gaping hole in the ship and it rapidly sank. A Republican seaplane drove the submarine away with a depth charge attack, then landed and began rescuing men in the...
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Dr. Irving Busch (1896-1960), a graduate of Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, volunteered to serve in Spain with the American Medical Bureau. In Spain, he served with the Republican Medical Services. Both before and after Spain Busch was an amateur photographer and he carried his camera along with him. After his death...
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The picture of a young man in a jaunty hat and a big smile stared out of the 1978 issue of The Volunteer. The photo was accompanied by a request for information about Sidney Lorraine who died in Spain during the course of The Retreats. There is no evidence of any replies. Sidney Hotchkiss...
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Many American veterans went on to serve in WWII and Korea. This list is a work in progress. Those marked with an “*” were killed during the war. Office of Strategic Services Aalto, William Oliver WWII US Army, joined December 1941 served as 1st SGT transfer to OSS April 12, 1942; Dismissed after he...
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Eddie O’Neill was born in the same County Tyrone neighborhood as the poet Charlie Donnelly (1914-1937), who was killed in action at Jarama while serving as a platoon leader with the James Connolly Section of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. Inspired by the sacrifice of his fellow countryman and fellow Irish Socialist Republican, Eddie set...
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“A prominent competitive player in the United States gave a series of lectures and played over famous games from the past. To hear him talking—in our squalid surroundings—with such knowledge about a game once played by Napoleon on the island of St. Helena, was an uplifting and inspiring experience.” In his memoir To...
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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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