Songs for the Cause: Seeger, Davis, and Smith Sing for ALBA

November 22, 2010
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Songs for the Cause: Seeger, Davis, and Smith Sing for ALBA

There’s an extra beat here, I think.” Pete Seeger’s banjo tentatively picks the chords to “Viva la Quince Brigada,” the classic Spanish Civil War song that he first recorded in 1943. While Seeger, who is turning 92 this year, half-hums the staccato Spanish lyrics, blues singer Guy Davis hesitantly follows along on his guitar. (Event video here.) The tiny green...
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Posted in Events

NYC Teachers Attend ALBA Workshop

November 22, 2010
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NYC Teachers Attend ALBA Workshop

On Tuesday, November 2, over 40 New York City public high school teachers of social studies attended the second annual ALBA/Puffin Professional Development Day at NYU’s King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center. The teachers were selected from a pool of almost 100 applicants. In the morning session,...
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Posted in News

The Ghost of Gerda Taro

November 22, 2010
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The Ghost of Gerda Taro

Viewing Taro’s negatives of the Battle of Brunete, preserved for seventy years in the Mexican Suitcase, is like seeing a ghost. They constitute a visual record of the last days of her life. Indeed, many of them have a ghostly quality. Whether the negatives have deteriorated over the years or...
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Posted in Essays

Watt Essay Contest Winners

November 22, 2010
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Watt Essay Contest Winners

ALBA’s George Watt Memorial Essay Prizes are awarded annually to a graduate student and an undergraduate student who have written an outstanding essay or thesis chapter about any aspect of the Spanish Civil War, the...
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Posted in News

African Responses to Fascism & the Spanish Civil War

November 22, 2010
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African Responses to Fascism & the Spanish Civil War

Between World Wars I and II, the contentious issue of nationalism—how it can be shaped in radical or conservative ways by racially oppressed people; whether it must be embraced...
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Posted in Essays

Rival Durrutis: A Posthumous Cult of Personality

November 22, 2010
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Rival Durrutis: A Posthumous Cult of Personality

Buenaventura Durruti was a hero to the anarchist movement, and his death on the Madrid front on November 20, 1936, saw a mass outpouring of grief from Spain’s anarchists....
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Posted in Essays

From Madrid to Guernica: Picasso, Louis Delaprée and the bombing of civilians, 1936-1937

November 23, 2010
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From Madrid to Guernica: Picasso, Louis Delaprée and the bombing of civilians, 1936-1937

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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Posted in Features

Bombs Over Madrid

November 23, 2010
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Bombs Over Madrid

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...
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Posted in Features

Photos Show Spanish Life in NYC

November 23, 2010
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Photos Show Spanish Life in NYC

On September 17, over 150 people attended the opening of “La colonia: a photo album of Spanish immigrants in New York, 1898–1945” at NYU’s King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center. Curated by ALBA board member James D. Fernández, “La colonia” uses the family archives of seven descendants of Spanish immigrants to...
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Posted in Events

Book Reviews: Spain’s legacy in Britain

November 23, 2010
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Book Reviews: Spain’s legacy in Britain

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...
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Posted in Reviews

European Reunion in Berlin

November 23, 2010
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Joined by guests from Spain, France, Austria, Denmark, and the Netherlands, the German Fighters and Friends of the Spanish Republic 1936-1939 held their 13th annual get-together in Berlin last...
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Posted in News

A Volunteer’s Farewell: Sam Levinger

November 23, 2010
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A Volunteer’s Farewell: Sam Levinger

When he volunteered in 1937 to fight against fascism during the Spanish Civil War, 20-year old Samuel Levinger was an undergraduate at Ohio State University in Columbus, a Socialist,...
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Posted in Letters

Arborglyphs Found in California

November 23, 2010
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Arborglyphs Found in California

While hiking in the Glass Mountains of Mono County, California, last year, Betty Brown of Kensington, California, came upon some carvings made on aspen trees, referring to the Spanish...
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Posted in News

Previews of 2011: Save These Dates

November 23, 2010
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San Francisco, February 25, 2011, ALBA-Bill Susman Lecture: Marjorie Cohn; NYC, May 14, 2011: Annual Reunion and Human Rights Award; Berkeley, May 29, 2011 Freight and Salvage Bay Area Annual...
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Posted in Events

On the use of “¡Presente!”

November 23, 2010
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On the use of “¡Presente!”

We Spanish people will never be able to express with words the gratitude we feel for the likes of Mr. Samuel Lesser. Just one small note that I think...
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Posted in Letters