This is a great video about Scottish anarchist Ethel MacDonald who was in Barcelona between 1936 and 1937, working with the CNT. In the crackdown after May 1937 she assisted the escape of anarchists wanted by the Communist secret police and by helping anarchists escape Spain, she became renowned in the British press as the “Scots Scarlet Pimpernel
Monthly Archives: July 2011
Photos of Anarchism
This is a great slideshow of photos of Anarchism in Spain between 1936 and 1939. El Público
In the above photo, peasants arrive in Barcelona from the Aragonese front in 1936. The photo is in Plaça Catalunya.
The Spanish Holocaust
The Spanish holocaust · ELPAÍS.com in English. Review of Paul Preston’s seminal work
Clemency was not a word that Captain Manuel Díaz Criado understood. During his four months in charge of security in the Andalusian capital of Seville following the capture of the city in July 1936 by the forces of General Francisco Franco, he launched a reign of terror, rounding up anybody suspected
Ay Carmela by Darko Rundek
I love this version of Ay Carmela in Serbo-Croat
The legacy of Francoism
The fascist dictator’s shadow still hangs over Spain – but can this generation or the next finally bring catharsis to the nation?
Stalinist repression in Barcelona in 1937
A short letter from an Amercian member of the POUM describing the Stalinist repression in Barcelona in 1937
http://orwell.ru/a_life/Spanish_War/english/e_harry
Dear Marty:
The P.O.U.M. has been suppressed. Its paper and plant, all institutions and buildings seized. All occupants arrested. Most of the leaders including Nin have been jailed.
Every foreigner not a Stalinist is suspect and scores and scores have been arrested.
Hundreds arrests take place. The streets bustle with armed assault guards and a Hitlerite tenor prevails.
All prisoners are held incommunicado; a gigantic frame-up is being concocted. The charge: Criminal political conspiracy with the German and Italian fascists.
I’ve been running around like a hunted rat. Detectives have appeared at my hotel. Fortunately, the clerk speaks English and gave me warning. …
The CNT film industry
Interesting piece on the CNT film industry during the Spanish Civil War
Collectivized Creativity: The Rediscovered Films of the CNT | Film International
It was in August 1936 that the SUEP decided to create a ‘Committee of Cinema Economy’ in order to define the goals and decide on the administration of the amusement industry within the revolutionary movement. Early in 1937, SIE Films (‘Union of the amusement industry’) was created, and it was under its label that most of the CNT films appeared. As Prost observes in his documentary: ‘Right from July 1936, the anarchists decided to work within this essential dimension of the culture industry that is the cinema’. The film industry was therefore collectivized by the CNT, and its members produced and directed documentaries, newsreels and fiction films, all of which are anchored in the events of the war and revolution. They made no less than 200 documentaries and eight fiction films.
David Seymore -mother and baby
Mother nursing a baby while listening to political speech, near Badajoz, late April–early May 1936. By David Seymour.
A nurse in the Spanish Civil War
Penny Feiwel obituary – The Guardian Nurse who volunteered to serve on the Republican side during the Spanish civil war