
The Faith and the Fury: Popular Anticlerical Violence and Iconoclasm in Spain, 1931-1936. By Maria Thomas. (Brighton: Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies/Sussex Academic Press, 2013.)
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The Faith and the Fury: Popular Anticlerical Violence and Iconoclasm in Spain, 1931-1936. By Maria Thomas. (Brighton: Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies/Sussex Academic Press, 2013.)
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Carlos Blanco Aguinaga, a preeminent scholar of Spanish literature, a refugee of the Spanish Civil War, and a great friend of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and ALBA, died on September 11. A prolific, rigorous and charismatic scholar, he helped reshape the field of Hispanic Studies in the United States and Spain.
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In June 1935, nearly 2,000 young, unemployed, and angry men living in western Canada and intent on demonstrating their discontent hitched a ride on a train of boxcars to Ottawa. The men who participated in the “On-to-Ottawa Trek” were fed up with the abhorrent conditions in Prime Minister Richard Bennett’s ‘relief camps’ and...
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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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El bombardeo de Gernika es un evento muy complejo. En este artículo he procurado dar respuesta a uno de los aspectos más críticos sobre el bombardeo, su naturaleza. Procuraré asimismo exponer una cuestión íntimamente ligada a la historia del bombardeo y de gran relevancia tal cual es el negacionismo producto de la política propagandística...
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The bombing of Gernika, in April 1937, continues to be shrouded in mystery and lies. Xabier Irujo has spent six years researching 12,000 documents from Basque, Spanish, French, British, United States and Italian archives. A summary of his findings.
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Last May, in a historic verdict, former Guatemala dictator Ríos Montt was found guilty of genocide. Ten days later the verdict was vacated in a controversial split decision by Guatemala's highest court. Pamela Yates and Paco de Onís filmed the entire trial.
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In February 1940, one year after the end of the Spanish Civil War, eight members of the Lincoln-Washington Battalion still languished in Spanish prisons. Among them were Peter Kerhlicker, Rudolph Opara, and Larry Doran. Buried in the Spanish military archives are documents of their trials. An original investigation.
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A principios de febrero de 1940, casi un año después de finalizada la guerra civil española, aún habían 8 brigadistas norteamericanos encarcelados en prisiones españolas. Estos voluntarios no habían sido liberados junto al resto de sus compatriotas, pues habían estado sometidos a Causas Judiciales militares por el Ejército vencedor y condenados por supuestos delitos...
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Carl Geiser, political commissar of the Lincoln Battalion, prisoner of war held in Spain until 1939, and author of Prisoners of the Good Fight, left the letters he wrote to his family to the ALBA collection. The complete letters, edited by Peter N. Carroll and Fraser Ottanelli, have just published by Kent State University...
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Jewish volunteers from Palestine and the central role of the Virgen del Pilar in the rise of Spanish National-Catholicism are the topics of this year’s award-winning essays.
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ALBA is proud to announce a new website for high school teachers in Social Studies, Spanish, and English Language Arts, featuring resources and lesson plans aligned with the Common Core State Standards.
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ALBA’s third human rights film series, held at Pace University this past November, featured eight compelling documentaries. Richard Rowley’s Dirty Wars (2013) lays bare the dirty little secret of America’s War on Terror with the help of investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill; Tatiana Huezo’s The Tiniest Place (2012) tells the story of Cinquera, a village literally wiped off the official...
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“Singing was an important part of our life in Spain,” wrote Lincoln Brigade volunteer Carl Geiser. And music was a strong theme at the West Coast ALBA annual reunion held at the Freight & Salvage music hall in Berkeley, California on October 6.
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An unprecedented 71 New York high school teachers—who collectively teach more than 7,000 students every day—gathered at the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center on November 5 for a full-day workshop. The ALBA institute, taught by Peter Carroll, James Fernández, and Sebastiaan Faber, introduced teachers of Social Studies, Spanish, and English Language Arts...
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In Spain with Orwell: George Orwell and the Independent Labour Party Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, by Christopher Hall (Tippermuir Books, Perth, 2013) £12.50
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In and Out of the Lion’s Den: Poverty, War and Football by Julie Ryan (2013) £9.99
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Franco’s International Brigades: Adventurers, Fascists and Christian Crusaders in the Spanish Civil War, by Christopher Othen (Hurst & Company, London, 2013) £15.99
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The Spanish Civil War: Exhuming a Buried Past, edited by Anindya Raychaudhuri (University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 2013) £90
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Norman Bethune in Spain: Commitment, Crisis and Conspiracy, by David Lethbridge (Sussex Academic Press, Eastbourne, 2013) £25
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Physical Resistance: A Hundred Years of Anti-Fascism, by Dave Hann (Zero Books, Winchester, 2013) £18.99*
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A Short History of the Spanish Civil War, by Julián Casanova (IB Tauris, London, 2012) £12.99
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The Life and Death of the Spanish Republic, by Henry Buckley. (London, New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013). Introduction by Paul Preston.
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Savage Coast by Muriel Ruykeyser. The Feminist Press, 2013.
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‘Homage to Catalonia’ Praised for literary merit but criticised for narrow focus at Len Crome Memorial Lecture
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Get to know two members of the ALBA community.
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On July 25, 1937, the New York Times’ John T. McManus interviewed Joris Ivens, a young Dutch movie director who had just arrived in the United States. What sparked the interview was the premiere of The Spanish Earth, a documentary about the Spanish Civil War financed by a handful of American intellectuals that included...
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As Congress returns from its summer vacation, for the first time in a generation it will confront the meaningful prospect of enacting immigration reform legislation. That reform is even a possibility is due in large part to the courage, militancy, and strategic vision of undocumented immigrant youth across the country, whose risk-taking campaign...
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The wandering Dutchman Bart van der Schelling painted with Willem de Kooning, sang with Woody Gunthrie and Pete Seeger, fought fascists in the Lincoln Battalion, and is credited with the lyrics to "Viva la Quince Brigada"--yet much of his life remains shrouded in mystery. Yvonne Scholten investigates.
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Bay Area ALBA Reunion, October 6
This Land is Our Land: Internationalism, Citizenship, Resistance; a commemorative celebration marking the 77th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War
Join us!
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The new Common Core Standards provide ALBA with an opportunity to help more high school teachers introduce the Spanish Civil War into their classes. Students will study history not by rote or memorization, but by confronting directly original primary documents.
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Milton Wolff, last commander of the Abraham Lincoln battalion, marveled that it took him more years to write his memoir of the Spanish Civil War (Another Hill) than it took him to fight in it. For a “little war” (both in duration and scope) that war has had immense consequences and attracted immeasurable interest.
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On July 3, ALBA became the first organization from the United States to join the Plataforma por la Comisión de la Verdad sobre los Crímenes del Franquismo (Platform for the Truth Commission about the Crimes of Francoism). This initiative is the first step toward creating a United Nations Truth Commission in pursuit of justice...
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A broad coalition of organizations, including both ALBA and Baltasar Garzón's new foundation, is calling for a commission to establish, once and for all, the truth about the crimes of Francoism. Will they be successful? And if they are, what can a truth commission actually accomplish?
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A Madrid court order to remove the recently installed monument honoring the foreign volunteers who supported the Republic during the Spanish Civil War has sparked worldwide outrage. Spain’s Friends of the International Brigades (AABI) report.
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