Remarkable retrophotograph by Ulrich Eumann, an expert in the work of Hans Gutmann, better known in Spanish as Juan Guzmán. It shows several tiznaos (the name for vehicles armoured with steel plates) in Plaça Catalunya on 20 July 1936 combined with the square today complete with a Bus Turístic. It is amazing that within one of day of the coup the anarchist workers set to welding these plates on trucks and luxury Hispano-Suizos. More here in German
Child in Barcelona 1938 by Ione Robinson.
“In September 1938, Robinson arrived in Barcelona. Over the course of two months, Robinson produced a series of drawings and paintingsin the Catalan munitions factories, refugios, hospitals; and on the Ebro front with the Republican 5th Army . As she writes in her 1946 memoir, A Wall to Paint On, “…in the drawings I have made here in Spain I have tried to express-through simple line-the agonizing effect of war upon the innocent victims: the women and children…through what I felt and saw in their eyes-and hands.” She left Spain at the end of October, 1938.” More here http://ionerobinson.org/
A Barcelona court wants Italy to apologise for the war crime of mass bombardment during the civil war, in support of General Franco. The picture shows the destruction casued by the March 1938 Coliseum bomb. More here in The Guardian
Photo by Guillermo Zúñiga, somewhere on the Madrid Front.
More information here about the discovery of this remarkable photographer, who has been called the Robery Capa of Madrid
http://www.publico.es/390260/guillermo-zuniga-ha-nacido-otro-capa Plus brilliant archive here: http://www.publico.es/especial/lopez-zuniga/
Somebody last year had the fun idea in Barcelona of sticking up the 1936-39 street names over the plaques with today’s names. This particular street (Marqués de Campo Sagrado) was renamed after anarcho-syndicalist printer Tomás Herreros Miguel a month after he died in 1937. PS it wasn’t me.
Referring to the contribution of the Spanish Maquis to the French resistance movement, Martha Gellhorn wrote in The Undefeated (1945):
“During the German occupation of France, the Spanish Maquis engineered more than four hundred railway sabotages, destroyed fifty-eight locomotives, dynamited thirty-five railway bridges, cut one hundred and fifty telephone lines, attacked twenty factories, destroying some factories totally, and sabotaged fifteen coal mines. They took several thousand German prisoners and – most miraculous considering their arms – they captured three tanks. In the south-west part of France where no Allied armies have ever fought, they liberated more than seventeen towns.”
Front page of L’Esquella de la Torratxa, 1934. Usually a satirical magazine, but in this case a special edition dedicated to the repressive use of Montjüic and its castle.
Spain’s so-called peaceful model Transition between 1975 and 1983 resulted in 591 deaths at the hands of extreme left and right terrorist groups but also including no less than 188 by the Institutions of the State. Photo is of the funeral of communist labour lawyers killed in 1977 in a neo-fascist terrorist attack at Atocha, Madrid. Article here is entitled “The Transition was a Fairy Tale“
If you happen to live near Falkirk (Scotland), my friend Christine Jones has organised what looks like a very interesting exhibition (until 20 April) inspired by Gerda Taro. Christine notes
“Still Cause is a project and exhibition focused on the struggle for justice and recognition which is ongoing in Spain post-Franco, with the notions of memory, loss, activism and solidarity implicit within the work. Initially inspired by the photojournalist Gerda Taro and her work during the Spanish Civil War, this first exhibition is dedicated to her memory.”