Richard Bermack is a documentary photographer and writer who has worked primarily for labor unions, including SEIU, the UAW, and the ILWU. In addition to his work on radical and labor history, he has written about and photographed workers involved in children and family services, welfare reform, aiding people with disabilities, and health care...
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In the fall of 2014, Stanley Payne and Jesús Palacios published a new biography of Francisco Franco. Spanish historian Ángel Viñas, who was finishing up his own book on the dictator, was appalled to find their account riddled with “the most flagrant and, at times, grotesque mistakes, omissions, and misleading interpretations.” This past September,...
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For the past 15 years, Velina Brown has been singing at Lincoln Brigade reunions, most recently at ALBA’s New York celebration in May. “The vibe in the room is often lush with emotion, a sense of connectedness and passion.”
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Timothy Johnson takes over this month as Head of Tamiment Library, whose outstanding holdings include the ever-expanding ALBA collection. Johnson will be working with Assistant Curator and Public Services Librarian Kate Donovan. A conversation about plans, challenges, and legacies.
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In Spain this past May, the usually dull and boring elections to the European Union’s Parliament produced a sudden shock to the political system. A new two-month-old party led by a 35-year-old, pony-tailed political scientist, appeared out of nowhere—but clearly from the Left—to sweep up a surprising 8 percent of the votes. The result...
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Tracy Blake teaches Social Studies at Olmsted Falls High School in northeastern Ohio. Born and raised in Oregon, he has been in the classroom for more than 20 years. He has participated in two ALBA teacher institutes and is one of the co-authors of ALBA’s Social Studies lesson plans available on the newly launched...
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In every issue of The Volunteer we introduce two members of the ALBA community. Meet Spanish professor Evelyn Scaramella and author Victor Grossman.
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In 2011, David Graeber’s monumental book "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" was published. In that very same year, he burst into national consciousness with the Occupy Wall Street movement he helped to spark.
This year, he has written a daring book “The Democracy Project: A History, A Crisis, A Movement.” Part reflection on Occupy...
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Luis García Montero is one of Spain’s most prominent public intellectuals. A successful poet and frequent political columnist for the progressive online paper Público, he is also a leading figure in the United Left coalition (Izquierda Unida) and has been among the most vocal supporters of Judge Baltasar Garzón. Last year, he helped found...
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Paul Preston is impossible to avoid. Author of twelve books, editor of several more, and director of an important series on the subject, he towers mile-high in the landscape of Spanish Civil War scholarship. And yet in person he can be quite elusive. A previously arranged meeting for an interview in London first had...
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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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Amirah Inglis’s (1926-2015) collection of photographs assembled for her research on Australians in the Spanish Civil War (1987) is posted on JSTOR’s website. The collection includes 119 images varying from pamphlet covers, post cards, to photographs of volunteers who supported the Spanish Republic at home, and of volunteers who went to Spain. Inglis planned...
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After attending the AABI event honoring the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in Madrid, in February 2025, Anita Caref, a retired adult literacy educator, started an antifascist children’s book club.
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Ca-Vostra, a bar-hotel in the historic center of Ibiza Town that the Austrian painter Lene Schneider-Kainer opened in 1933, served for years as a refuge for artists and intellectuals fleeing Nazism—until she herself was forced into exile. Sol Izquierdo reconstructs a remarkable life.
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The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, New York’s Volunteers In the spring semester of 2020, the first thirty-three students completed biographical sketches that were published to a student-built website. Stuyvesant High School teacher David Hanna declared his goal for students to compile biographical entries for each of the approximately 800 volunteers who went to Spain from...
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A new episode of the podcast “Family Secrets of the Spanish Civil War” is now available. In the podcast, which premiered in October 2024, historians Patricia Schechter and Dan Czitrom discuss the impact of the Spanish war on their and others’ families. This episode features the children of Anna and Alvin Warren. Below is a...
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In 2025 the fourth stage of ALBA’s Passport Project wrapped up. The fourth stage focused on volunteers on whom we have very little information to enable a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) search. Most of the volunteers submitted had at least a year of birth to reference. Expectations...
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On the fiftieth anniversary of Franco’s death, the New York Times published an article by Jason Horowitz about the “nostalgia” for Francisco Franco being expressed by a growing number of younger Spaniards, most of whom have no direct experience of the dictator. As is common these days in the Times’ coverage of any number...
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The family of Paul Andrew Mooney (1910-1961) is searching for documentation to substantiate information he provided to his family about serving in the International Brigades. Paul Mooney was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated from Hughes High School in 1929 and attended the University of Cincinnati in 1929, 1935 and 1936. In...
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Teesside, an industrial region in Northeast England that in the nineteenth century grew to be a center of shipbuilding and iron and steel production, spawned no fewer than thirty International Brigade volunteers. Of the nine who were born in the borough of Stockton-on-Tees, moreover, six played leading roles in Spain: five rose to the rank of Lieutenant...
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The first thirty-six Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for Phase IV were submitted December 30, 2024. Phase IV is intended to focus on volunteers on whom we have minimal information. At some point in the future, I plan to resubmit some volunteers who were returned as not found or on whom no information...
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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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