El País has a useful overview of international editorials on the Garzón case. Reuters covers the union protest in Spain. Read more »
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Argentina tries probing crimes of Franco’s Spain
Argentine human rights groups are turning the tables on Spain, hoping to open a judicial probe of murders and disappearances committed during the Spanish Civil War and the early years of Gen. Francisco Franco's dictatorship.
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Abe Osheroff film screening in Minneapolis
Screening on April 23:
In this riveting and inspiring new film, Osheroff reflects on the meaning of his activism, exploring the ideas that animated his actions and sharing wisdom built up over a lifetime of commitment to the "radical humanism" that defined his politics and philosophy. Presenting the film on...
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The Guardian on Garzón
Reed Brody today in The Guardian:
Thirty-five years after the death of General Francisco Franco, Spain is finally prosecuting someone in connection with the crimes of his dictatorship, and of the Spanish civil war which came...
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Week of mass events in support of Garzón
Yesterday the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, together with other organizations such as the left Spanish labor unions, kicked off what is going to be a week of mass international protests against the persecution of Judge Baltasar Garzón for his attempt to investigate possible crimes against humanity committed during the...
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Complaint against Supreme Court justice trying Garzón
El País reports: The organizations for the recovery of historical memory on whose behalf Judge Baltasar Garzón initiated an investigation of Francoist crimes--an case that resulted in Garzón's being accused of overstepping his judicial boundaries, and facing a possible 20-year suspension--are now charging the Supreme Court Justice in question with overstepping his judicial...
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On Civil War and Symbols
An interesting post at DailyKos linking Spain's memory of the Civil War with the situation in the United States:
After the transition to democracy, there was a Pact of Forgetting that was felt to be the only way to move forward. It allowed past Nationalists to participate in the nascent...
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Garzón appeals
From the AP:
The appeal claims the indictment is "contrary to law and implies a serious challenge to judicial independence."
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Capa/Taro footage in Cartier-Bresson documentary
While looking through the photographs of the Mexican Suitcase to write a text for the catalogue of the exhibition that will open next September at the ICP in NYC I identified some images that match some of the sections of the HCB documentary. In one instance there is a photograph showing both the camera...
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Website of the Week: The SCW Memory Project
A fascinating initiative from the University of California at San Diego, together with a group of Spanish organizations, to create an online audiovisual archive of victims' testimonies:
It aspires to constitute itself both as an archive of the repression and as an archive of the multiple political cultures (communism,...
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The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to promoting public awareness, research, and discussion about the Spanish Civil War. Learn more at our website or
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The Civil War Begins: Savage Coast (Costa Brava)
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On July 18, 1936, at the age of 22, the American poet Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980) traveled to Barcelona, on assignment for the British magazine Life and Letters Today, to report on the People’s Olympiad (Olimpiada Popular). An anti-fascist alternative to Hitler’s Berlin Olympics, the popular games were canceled when the outbreak of the Spanish...
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The truth about Guernica: Picasso and the lying press
What inspired Picasso to paint his Guernica? The great cultural tradition that links Picasso with artists like Goya has always been the High Road towards the masterpiece. But exploring the Low Road of newspapers, pamphlets and street posters can also provide surprisingly rich pickings, allowing us to reconstruct a street view of Picasso...
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Teaching Human Rights and the Spanish Civil War
As we begin the fifth year of ALBA’s teaching programs for high school instructors, we are detecting positive patterns in the anonymous evaluations each teacher is asked to complete at the end of the program. Last December in Chicago, for example, a male world history teacher indicated that he had begun the session with...
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2012 ALBA Puffin Human Rights Award honors struggle for accountability in Latin America
Two winners share the honors of this year’s ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, splitting $100,000 to continue their fight for justice in Latin America. (Read the full press release here. En castellano; order tickets here).
Both Fredy Peccerelli, Executive Director of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation, and Kate Doyle, Senior Analyst of U.S. policy in Latin America...
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Fanny, Queen of the Machine Gun
Fanny Schoonheyt, the tall, blond “queen of the machine gun,” was the only Dutch woman to join in the battle action during the Spanish Civil War. Her life is shrouded in mystery. Could she have been the only female foreign official in the Republican Army? What was her involvement in the events of May...
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Luis Buñuel, chameleon: Revelations from the “Red Decade”
Luis Buñuel: The Red Years, 1929-1939, due to be published next month with the University of Wisconsin Press (excerpt, order), reveals scores of unknown facts about the life and work of Luis Buñuel during a crucial decade not only in the filmmaker’s life but in the history of film and photography—as well...
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Buñuel and the outbreak of the war
Among the sources of information about Buñuel's activities during the first few weeks of the war: is a receipt signed dated 25 August 1936, for a loan of £490 granted by Leo Fleischman, an engineer from New York who enlisted in the Fifth Regiment and died in combat in October 1936.
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Thoughts of the Evening: Olavi Kantola
Olavi Kantola was a Finnish-American volunteer in the International Brigades. This text by Alina Flinkman appeared in the Finnish magazine "Vaku" in 1941.
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Sneak Preview: Paul Preston on the Spanish Holocaust
Behind the lines during the Spanish Civil War, nearly two hundred thousand men and women were murdered extra-judicially or executed after flimsy legal process. They were killed as a result of the military coup of 17-18 July 1936 against the Second Republic. For the same reason, at least three hundred thousand men...
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A Hemingway film and Picasso’s Guernica
Under the heading “New theories about a 20th century icon” El País reports that José Luis Alcaine has found extremely interesting parallels between the film version of Hemingway’s novel A Farewell to Arms, and Picasso’s Guernica. Alcaine, a director of photography who has worked with Pedro Almodóvar and Victor Erice, summarises his conclusions...
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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