Ángel Viñas, La otra cara del Caudillo. Mitos y realidades en la biografía de Franco, Barcelona: Crítica, 2015, pp. 439.

Reviewed by Antonio Cazorla-Sánchez

Palmira Julia Tello Landeta, immortalized as miliciana on a magazine cover in wartime Spain, passed away in early 2016.
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Diverse opinion abounds with regards to Hemingway’s actions during and after Spain’s Civil War. The Spanish journalist and diplomat Álvarez del Vayo recalled that “I talked with him in Madrid and I realized the Spanish war was fundamentally alien to him. Hemingway’s was the Spain of the running of the bulls at...
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There are numerous comparisons that can be made between the conflict in Syria and the Spanish Civil War. Both conflicts feature a ruthless dictator, appalling loss of life, war crimes and the massive displacement of tens of thousands of refugees. However, such superficial comparisons apply to many other conflicts. Merely in terms of...
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On May 20, 1938, Dave Lipton tells his parents that he is leaving for the Catskills to work as a waiter. Instead, he sails for Europe to join the Abraham Lincoln. Dave sends letter after letter home detailing his hopes and begging for forgiveness. He never receives a reply. Decades later, his niece Eunice...
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Del Berg, the last known surviving veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, died peacefully in his California home on Sunday, February 28. He was 100 years old. Berg was born in 1915 outside of Los Angeles to a family of poor farm workers. His mother’s line had long since emigrated from Bavaria while his...
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The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA, www.alba-valb.org) mourns the loss of Michael Ratner, a longtime defender of civil liberties in the United States and abroad.
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While attending an ALBA institute, a veteran Brooklyn teacher discovers that a Lincoln volunteer lived just around the corner. He decides to find out more and unearths a touching story.
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Salvadoran survivors of state terror—crimes for which no one has been held accountable—have created an organization that helps families uncover the truth of what happened to their lost loved ones. This is no small task. But given the intense U.S. involvement in El Salvador, some of the information they seek may be available in...
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The torch has been passed. Eighty years after the Spanish Civil War inspired volunteers from 52 countries to challenge the spread of international fascism, no American veterans of that struggle are alive to bear witness, but their spirit and commitment to social justice, human rights, and anti-fascism lives on in the work of current...
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The legacy of the Spanish Civil War played a crucial role in the lives of Lydia Cacho and Jeremy Scahill, the winners of the ALBA/Puffin Award. But how do we ensure its transmission to younger generations, whose life world is so different that they often have trouble even reading the Lincolns’ hand-written letters? ALBA’s...
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Efforts are ongoing to address the deterioration of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade monument in San Francisco. After initial problems of deliberate vandalism were dealt with, the elements began to take their toll on the structure. However, we have been involved in extensive conversations with different offices of the city of San Francisco for well...
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ALBA’s Teaching Institutes continue to break new ground across the United States, reaching more teachers in new communities, expanding opportunities, and seeing exciting results.
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Acceptance speech by Jeremy Scahill on receiving the 2016 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism. May 7, 2016. New York. Lydia just pushed me to come here first (crowd laughs.) I really, in all candor, I feel like I shouldn’t be here receiving this award, particularly because I think that my co-recipient, Lydia, is one of the...
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Acceptance speech by Lydia Cacho on receiving the 2016 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism. May 7, 2016. New York Thank you so much. I also want to dedicate this award to Mike, Jeremy father. You only see fantastic men that are involved in human rights instead of trying to kill others when you...
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On May 7, the ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Right Activism—a cash tribute of $100,000—honored two courageous journalists, Lydia Cacho and Jeremy Scahill, for their dedication to exposing corruption, violence, and the abuse of power which are routinely ignored by mainstream media. They do this work under life-threatening conditions of danger and risk. The day’s...
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Maria Thomas, The Faith and the Fury: Popular Anticlerical Violence and Iconoclasm in Spain, 1931-1936. Brighton, Portland, and Toronto: Sussex Academic Press, in collaboration with the Cañada Blanche Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies, 2013. xxi + 269 pp.

Live Souls: Citizens and Volunteers of Civil War Spain, by Serge Alternês & Alec Wainman. Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2015. 335 pp.
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In the spring of 1937 some twenty students from Brooklyn College volunteered to fight in Spain. This unique exhibit, curated by Prof. Alejandro Alonso, in partnership with ALBA, will cover three aspects: political life on campus in the 30s; the impact of the Spanish Civil War and the debates and confrontations that took place there; and the presence of Spanish Exiles...
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I am the youngest veteran of the Spanish Civil War, born in Barcelona on July 18th, 1930. "Veteran"? Yes. Not a combatant, but a child that together with his mother and brothers survived the fascist Italian and Nazi bombings of Barcelona. My Greek father, who was a naturalized U.S. citizen, and working at Lykes...
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Mark Derby, Petals and Bullets: Dorothy Morris: New Zealand Nurse in the Spanish Civil War (Brighton/Toronto/Chicago: Sussex Academic Press, 2015).

The New Year has barely started and ALBA is already at work on an exciting number of programs and activities.
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Robert Hale Merriman, Chief of Staff of the XV International Brigade, disappeared behind enemy lines. His body was never recovered. What happened? Two memoirs and an interview give conflicting versions.
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Why did the American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War name themselves after Abraham Lincoln? Who first came up with the idea of the “Lincoln Battalion” and when? New information is complicating the long-accepted account.
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In this excerpt from his new book Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, Adam Hochschild tells the story of Swarthmore student Joe Selligman (1916-1937), the first American volunteer to join the battle for Madrid. After he left, his parents in Kentucky received an envelope mailed by a friend: “By...
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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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This January 19th, exhumation procedures began to recover the remains of Timoteo Mendieta, murdered by the Franco regime in 1939. In 2013, his daughter Ascensión testified before María Servini, the Argentine judge who has investigated Franco’s crimes against humanity since 2010. On Servini’s orders, the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory took charge of the exhumation, helped...
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The 2016 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism will be shared by journalists Lydia Cacho and Jeremy Scahill, who have dedicated their careers to exposing corruption, violence and abuse of power. Award ceremony: NYC, Saturday, May 7 (tickets)
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What you leave to friends and loved one--and the causes you champion--are ways of expressing your hopes and dreams for the future and perpetuate your part in the story of the Lincoln Brigade. As you make your plans, please consider including ALBA in your will or living trust, or naming us as a...
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Ensure more of your money goes to our mission by lowering costs and supporting our cause without a big one-time hit to your wallet.
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Of particular interest are the photos that Fernández and Argeo have rescued from family albums for Chapter V, which documents the intense pro-Republican mobilization of Spanish American communities all over the country.
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Twenty medical doctors serving in the International Brigades went straight from Spain to China to help the country defend itself against Japanese aggression. They are remembered fondly in China today.
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Las Brigadas internacionales a través del cómic: 1977-2012, Ángel Luis Arjona Márquez, Albacete, 2014.
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Christopher Vials, Haunted by Hitler: Liberals, the Left, and the Fight against Fascism in the United States. University of Massachusetts Press, 2014. 296 pages.

Hearty congratulations on the terrific job you have done setting up the huge database on the Volunteers! This is the crucial information and you have made it very accessible, attractive and useful. I finally found an old friend of the family here at last. A splendid job!
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