Angel Viñas's trilogy on the Republic constitutes, without a doubt, the most detailed and fully documented archival studies of the international diplomatic and military reactions to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War; and also of the efforts of the successive Republican governments to overcome the politico-economic hostility of the major democratic powers—England, France,...
Read more »
Juan Negrín y López, the “enigmatic” leader of the Spanish Republic from May 1937 until its defeat in March 1939, has not been treated kindly in many histories of the Civil War. Some attacks have been personal, with critics scoffing at his “lavish spending…his delight in pretty women and his gargantuan eating and drinking.”...
Read more »
Anne Chisholm, in this Sunday's Telegraph, and Michael Eaude, in the Independent, review Javier Cercas' Anatomy of a Moment, a prize-winning fictionalized history of the failed February 1981 coup:
The Anatomy of a Moment is extensively researched, rigorous with the facts. It is not only history, though, for where...
Read more »
Ronald Fraser, author of the pathbreaking oral history Blood of Spain, reviews Julián Casanova's newly translated The Spanish Republic and Civil War (Cambridge, 2010) in the most recent issue of the New Left Review:
The belief that the Spanish Civil War can essentially be reduced to a struggle...
Read more »
Looking Back at the Spanish Civil War is a collection of the first 10 Len Crome annual lectures sponsored by the IBMT. Antifascistas is more of a picture book designed to accompany a traveling exhibition honoring the role of British and Irish volunteers in Spain.
Read more »
Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham. Introduction by Nick Tosches. New York Review of Books/paperback. On his way out of Spain in 1938, Bill Gresham, a Baltimore-born volunteer in the John Brown Artillery company of the International Brigades, heard a strange story from one of his comrades, Joseph “Doc” Halliday, about an alcoholic carnival...
Read more »
Isabelle Rohr, The Spanish Right and the Jews, 1898-1945: Anti-Semitism and Opportunism, Brighton/Portland Sussex University Press, 2008. This is an intriguing study of the relationship mostly of the Spanish Right, but also until the post-Franco years, of the Spanish state itself, with its own Jews, so to speak, the Sephardic community. It hearkens back...
Read more »
I receive a steady flow of requests for a copy of my review of Cecil D. Eby's book Comrades and Commissars: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War. I thought readers of this blog might want to see it. Click here to read it in pdf.
Read more »
La Batalla Del Jarama, by Jesús González de Miguel, and Los Internacionales: English Speaking Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, edited by Antonio R. Celada, Manuel González de la Aleja, and Daniel Pastor García.
Read more »
Max Aub was a novelist and playwright of remarkable originality who spent his live chronicling the conflict that had torn his country apart and catapulted him into exile. Almost forty years after his death, Verso has published Field of Honour, the first of Aub's 6-volume Civil War cycle.
Read more »
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
sign up to receive email updates from ALBA. Support ALBA through a tax-deductible gift! To inquire about a donation, please contact the ALBA office at info@alba-valb.org or 212-674-5398.
The “Spanija” series translates selected autobiographical accounts by Yugoslavian and Montenegrin volunteers of their actions in the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ray Hoff used Google translate from Croatian to English and he edited the selections. As this is a machine translation, the idiomatic features of Croatian or Serbian and the translation of names and...
Read more »
The “Spanija” series translates selected autobiographical accounts by Yugoslavian and Montenegrin volunteers of their actions in the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ray Hoff used Google translate from Croatian to English and he edited the selections. As this is a machine translation, the idiomatic features of Croatian or Serbian and the translation of names and...
Read more »
The “Spanija” series translates selected autobiographical accounts by Yugoslavian and Montenegrin volunteers of their actions in the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ray Hoff used Google translate from Croatian to English and he edited the selections. As this is a machine translation, the idiomatic features of Croatian or Serbian and the translation of names and places...
Read more »
The “Spanija” series translates selected autobiographical accounts by Yugoslavian and Montenegrin volunteers of their actions in the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ray Hoff used Google translate from Croatian to English and he edited the selections. As this is a machine translation, the idiomatic features of Croatian or Serbian and the translation of names and places...
Read more »
Many American volunteers who served in Spain worked as seamen. Many volunteers provided multiple types of jobs when they identified their vocation and not all on the list were working as seamen when they volunteered. Others worked as seamen early in their careers. There are 375 men on the list at present. This is...
Read more »
A Professional Development Workshop America and World Fascism: From the Spanish Civil War to Nuremberg and Beyond Online Workshop Providing 10 hours of NYSED-approved CTLE credit for teachers in Social Studies, Spanish/World Languages, & English Language Arts Nov. 7, 2023, 9 AM – 3 PM ET Online Join Us! Registration Deadline: November 6, 2023 This workshop requires a...
Read more »
Today, the ALBA Board of Governors issued the following statement: During this time of renewed labor action and organizing, ALBA reaffirms its support for the struggle for workers’ rights happening across the country. The headlines may announce victories, but they can also serve as a reminder that we must continue to be vigilant in...
Read more »
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.
Read more »
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....
Read more »
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...
Read more »
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
Search the Database