Today I’d like to share with you my honest understanding of what has been going on in Spain over the last few weeks.  It’s not easy to make sense of what’s going on; the mainstream Spanish press, in my opinion, has been getting things quite wrong, or else ignoring the situation, except in its...
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Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, members of ALBA, representatives of the Puffin Foundation, authorities, amigas y amigos: Seventy-five years ago in my country, Spain, one of the darkest and saddest chapters in the history of humanity began. It lasted more than forty years and even today, after 34 years of democracy, it has not...
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I would like to add a note on Picasso's sketch on a copy of Paris-Soir of April 19th, 1937. Since my piece was published in The Volunteer I have come across some new information that links the evidence on Picasso's initial engagement with the Spanish Civil War at the end of 1936 and...
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Although Picasso experts agree that the painter’s interest in the war as a subject was sparked some time in late 1936 or early 1937, the precise circumstances of the “conversion” that made the Guernica possible were never fully made clear—until now, that is. Last year, while preparing an edition of the Spanish Civil War...
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What follows is not the laying of charges. It is a recording secretary’s deposition. I catalogue the ruins, count the dead, weigh up the spilled blood. I have seen all these images of the martyred city of Madrid that I will try to show you, although mostly they defy description. I do not care for propaganda tracts or...
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Although Picasso experts agree that the painter’s interest in the war as a subject was sparked some time in late 1936 or early 1937, the precise circumstances of the “conversion” that made the Guernica possible were never fully made clear—until now, that is. Last year, while preparing an edition of the Spanish Civil War...
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As Judge Baltasar Garzón faces a backlash that may cost him his position in Spain’s judiciary, ALBA invited María Blanco to give the keynote talk at the annual reunion of the Bay Area veterans and friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Berkeley, California, on May 30, 2010. What follows is the full text...
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After twenty-six years in Barcelona, one of the world’s most prominent historians of twentieth-century Spain has moved back to the United States. Few foreign scholars command the respect and authority that Gabriel Jackson enjoys in Spain. For the past decade, Jackson has been working on a major biography of Juan Negrín, the Republic’s Prime...
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The morning of the publishing of the Saville Enquiry Report, June 15th 2010, I received an early call, from Elaine Brotherton, a close friend and niece of William McKinney, who was one of the thirteen men who shot dead by the British Army on January 30th 1972. The event became known to the world...
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Oliver Law, the first Black American to command white troops in battle, was appointed on July 5, 1937 as commander of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. According to eyewitness accounts of men under his command, Law died a hero’s death leading a charge against Francoist forces on Mosquito Hill at the Battle of Brunete on...
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