An eminent and prolific British historian of modern Spain, Preston says this was “an extremely painful book to write.” It is also, unlike several of his other works, a difficult book to read. The newcomer to Spanish history will nowhere learn the difference between the Assault Guard and the Civil Guard, or between a Carlist and an integrist. Chapters roll on for 40 or 50 pages without a break. A blizzard of names of thousands of perpetrators and the towns where they carried out their tortures and killings overwhelms the reader. “The Spanish Holocaust” is not really a narrative but a comprehensive prosecutor’s brief. With its immense documentation — 120 pages of endnotes to both published and unpublished material in at least five languages, including corrections of errors in these sources — it is bound to be an essential reference for anything written on the subject for years to come.

More here.

Robert Capa and Gerda Taro. Photo Fred Stein

The Observer‘s Sean O’Hagan reviews the translation of Susana Fortes’s novelized version of the love affair between Spanish Civil War photographers Gerda Taro and Robert Capa, the film rights for which have been bought by Michael Mann:

Fortes’s short novel is essentially a historical romance that concentrates on the relationship between Capa and Taro. While the historical settings are accurate, Fortes literally puts words into each of their mouths, imagining conversations, thoughts and debates as well as accentuating both the doomed romance and the reckless bohemianism of the times. With the Spanish civil war as its main backdrop, the narrative is an uneasy, sometimes awkward, merging of fact and fiction, and will almost certainly offend the many guardians of both Capa and Taro’s reputations just as it will no doubt entrance the mainstream cinema-going audience should it be made into a Hollywood film.

More here.

“They’re excavating the mass graves, they’re going through the political process of changing the history books, of removing big statues of Franco, like all of that stuff is just now happening. I mean come on, does it take that long?” Grey said. “So there could be a long period of adjustment after Suharto as well. ”

More here.

Most of the children were repatriated to Spain but some remained in Britain because their parents were either killed or imprisoned. Photo BBC.

A plaque has been unveiled in Sussex to commemorate the 4,000 Basque children brought to the county 75 years ago, the BBC reports:

The children were escaping the Spanish Civil War, and arrived on a ship from Bilbao. The ceremony took place in Blackboys, near Uckfield, where 20 children and their teachers lived in a chalet provided by the local community. Speaking at the ceremony, former refugee, Miren Alsono said: “It’s like a dream – now I can die happy.”

Read the whole story here.

Fredy Peccerelli, winner of the 2012 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, addresses the audience at the Museum of the City of New York, May 13, 2012. Photo Len Tsou

The work done by ALBA/Puffin Award winner Fredy Peccerelli and his team is absolutely essential, says his colleague José Suasnavar of the Guatemalan Association of Forensic Anthropology (FAFG), EFE reports In an interview with the prestigious Latin American academic institution FLACSO,  Suasnavar describes the Guatemalan exhumation process in detail. Read it here (in Spanish).

Kate Doyle and Freddy Peccerelli after accepting the 2012 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism in New York. Photo Len Tsou.

writes in Salon:

Kate Doyle’s job isn’t exactly journalism, though she’s nailed more big stories than many Pulitzer Prize winners. Her work does not quite qualify as law enforcement either, though a few bad guys living in confined quarters rue the day she came into their lives. “Human rights detective” sounds flippant, so she prefers “forensic archivist.”

Read the whole piece here.

Kate Doyle accepts the 2012 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism. Photo Len Tsou.

Lisa Mullens interviewed ALBA/Puffin Award winner Doyle on the Public Radio International program The World. Doyle discusses her work in Guatemala and Peru. You can listen to the full hour-long program, or just the interview with Kate, titled “Documenting Latin America’s Painful Past.” (Transcript here.) “Yes, it is scary to go up against human rights criminals,” Doyle tells Mullens. “But I think all of us who do this work, that when we get to go up against them in a court of law, we feel that we are a participating in history…”

Asked about the notion that it is better for Latin America to forget about its violent past, Doyle says: “Latin America suffered its own kind of holocaust in the 20^th century. It is hard for us as U.S. citizens to conceive of the dimensions of violence that took place during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s basically on behalf of an anti-communist ideology that the United States promulgated in the region. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed. Civilians, unarmed civilians were killed, hundreds of thousands more were disappeared by their governments. The family members of the disappeared will never forget what happened and will never walk away from the fate of their loved ones. So to me it’s a false argument this idea that you can somehow bury a past as painful as that. Ignore the continued search on the part of the hundreds of thousands of people for mothers and sons and sisters and brothers. And somehow pretend that healthy functioning democratic societies can go forward without coming to terms with the fact that their own institutions targeted their civilians for death.”

Listen to the whole interview here.

Fredy Peccerelli and Kate Doyle, winners of the 2012 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism. Photo Richard Bermack.

Richard Bermack’s photographs of the 2012 ALBA celebration in New York, including the ALBA/Puffin Award ceremony and the reception, can be viewed here.

Fredy Peccerelli, winner of the 2012 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, addresses the audience at the Museum of the City of New York, May 13, 2012. Photo Len Tsou

Len Tsou has posted his photographs from yesterday’s annual ALBA celebration and ALBA/Puffin Award ceremony. View them here.