Death of last living Lincoln Brigade member

[peregrina2000]

I didn't post a link to the obituary initially because I thought it was perhaps too politically charged,

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/03/u...r-of-abraham-lincoln-brigade-dies-at-100.html

But when John McCain posted a tribute, I thought that sort of balanced things out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/o...version=Full&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article

I was in Spain when Aznar conferred Spanish citizenship on all members of the Lincoln Brigade and remember reading very moving reports of the many elderly men who came to collect it.

Buen camino, Laurie

 

[Saint Mike II]

Thanks Laurie and the obituary (by McCann) is correct very few of us less than 70 years knew about the Lincoln Brigade (even if we did study European Modern History after 1900. Australian teachers - many of whom were socialist ignored the non-European volunteers). Still I found it interesting that Berg was able to join the Communist Party (in 1943) whilst still officially, again according to McCann, still serving the US Army. Cheers Mike

 

[Jeff Crawley]

Viva la quince brigada.

In 2003, after doing my stint as a hospitalero at Rabanal, I was invited to the November workshop of the CSJ at Christ Church in Blackfriars.

Wandering around after lunch I found the other hall was hosting a reunion of survivors of the IB - have never felt so humble in my life.

 

[MickMac]

Viva la quince brigada.

In 2003, after doing my stint as a hospitalero at Rabanal, I was invited to the November workshop of the CSJ at Christ Church in Blackfriars.

Wandering around after lunch I found the other hall was hosting a reunion of survivors of the IB - have never felt so humble in my life.

Sad to hear this No Pasaran!

 

[KinkyOne]

In order to pay respect for all men/women that fought in Voluntarios Internacionales de la Libertad (International Brigades) I have walked on my Caminos for past two years with International Brigades flag/patch on my castro cap (see photo attached, taken at Cabo Finisterre after completion of my 2015 Camino combo).

Much to my surprise never had any problems about that even with Catholic priests. On the contrary, I've had many very interesting chats with locals and other Spaniards on the trail on that topic. Even nuns at monastery in Mora smilled when they (just two of them to be exact) saw it and asked me to recommend them to Santiago once in SdC. So I did.

No pasaran!

 

[mla1]

Thanks for posting this. On my first camino I wished I had known more about the civil war as we walked by memorial markers and plaques.
I have been looking for good spanish novels - translated - about the civil war to take with me next week on the vdlp. If anyone has any recommendations, I'd love to hear them.

 

[Anemone del Camino]

Thanks for posting this. On my first camino I wished I had known more about the civil war as we walked by memorial markers and plaques.
I have been looking for good spanish novels - translated - about the civil war to take with me next week on the vdlp. If anyone has any recommendations, I'd love to hear them.

@mla1 , here are two suggestions: by Maria Duenas, a novel that would ballpark translate as The spiy from Tangiers. Super best seller, not great writting but an entertaining novel that starts and ends in Spain and takes you from just beforw to just after the Civil War. I read it in French, I'm sure kt must have also been translated to English. The other is by Victoria Hislop and the original title is The Return. It starts like a bit of a "chickflick" two Brits go to Spain to taken dancing flamenco lessons blabla, but then one meets a bar owner who starts telling her the history of people in a photo that hans in the wall in the bar. That's when you start getting a sense of how the Civil War affected individuals in their private lives. Or couse it ends back in the present back to the chick flick but the heart of the novel is interesting.

 

[KinkyOne]

Thanks for posting this. On my first camino I wished I had known more about the civil war as we walked by memorial markers and plaques.
I have been looking for good spanish novels - translated - about the civil war to take with me next week on the vdlp. If anyone has any recommendations, I'd love to hear them.

Of course first novel that comes to my mind is For Whom the Bell Tolls.
After quick search there are:
- Andre Malraux - Man's Hope (L'Espoir, 1937), also a movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037680/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
- Shaun Herron - The Bird in Last Year's Nest (2014)
- Javier Cercas - Soldiers of Salamis (Soldados de Salamina, 2015)
- Lydie Salvayre - Cry, Mother Spain (Pas Pleur, 2014, Prix Goncourt)
- Bertha von Suttner - Lay Down Your Arms (Die Waffen nieder, Nobel Prize), also a movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3704536/
- Carlos Saura - This Light (Esa Luz, he's well known Spanish film director)
- Juan Eslava Galan - The Mule (La Mula, also http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006GF0J22/?tag=casaivar02-20)
- Manuel Rivas - The Carpenter's Pencil (El lapiz de carpintero)

Hope that helps

 

[mla1]

Excellent - thanks so much, K1 and Anemone!
I'm leaving tomorrow for Seville (!!!) and there haven't been enough minutes for research about novels!
On my first camino I bought For Whom the Bell Tolls at a bookstore in Leon and read it on the train from Santiago back to France.
Still one of my favourite books - partly because of the book itself, but also because of where and when I read it.

 

[Jeff Crawley]

You might try some non fiction too:
Laurie Lee's As I walked out one mid-summer's morning and Moments of War are both good and of course there's Orwell's Homage to Catalonia which you can find as a download pdf or epub.
I can heartily recommend Antony Beevor's The Battle for Spain although as it weighs in at a hefty 730gms in paperback form you might think twice about carrying it with you!

All wars are painful, "civil" wars all the more so and it's hard, as a historian, to walk through Spain without thinking about it.

On my first two Caminos as I walked past the Monte de Pedraja memorial between Villafranca and San Juan I wondered who the memorial was meant for - Nationalists or Republicans? Now we know that up to 300 Republicans from the region were taken to the woods, shot and buried and their families never knowing what had happened to them.

I hope that, when I pass by this year, the monument hasn't been vandalised again. Perhaps, as Basil Fawlty said, it's best to not mention the war.

 

[donalomahony]

Thank you for posting this link. John McCains response broadens the context. I am always on the look out for historical insights like this for my secondary school students who want to study something / someone different.

 

[Martin.P]

Hi, on the subject of books relating to the Spanish Civil War & the Franco years - from a sporting viewpoint check out "The Eagle from Toledo" the Life & Times of Frederico Bahamontes - a cyclist regarded as a National Hero during these times........depending on which side of the fence you sat of course!

 

[TaijiPilgrim]

I didn't post a link to the obituary initially because I thought it was perhaps too politically charged,

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/03/u...r-of-abraham-lincoln-brigade-dies-at-100.html

But when John McCain posted a tribute, I thought that sort of balanced things out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/o...version=Full&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article

I was in Spain when Aznar conferred Spanish citizenship on all members of the Lincoln Brigade and remember reading very moving reports of the many elderly men who came to collect it.

Buen camino, Laurie

Thank you, Laurie. On Carlos Nunez' album called "Discover Carlos Nunez" is a powerful song about the 5th International Brigade. When I volunteered at an English immersion program in Spain, we were told we could speak with our Spanish counterparts about any topic EXCEPT the Civil War. The reason was that it still is so close to the hearts of many Spaniards, who lost family members and whose relatives and friends suffered under the Franco regime. Indeed, one of my English friends somehow got onto the topic and found herself caught between two Spaniards with passionate but opposing points of view.

 

[NualaOC]

'Ghosts of Spain' by Charles Tremlett is also a very informative and interesting book. I'm reading it at the moment, thanks to a recommendation on another thread.

 

[Mike Trebert]

I didn't post a link to the obituary initially because I thought it was perhaps too politically charged,

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/03/u...r-of-abraham-lincoln-brigade-dies-at-100.html

But when John McCain posted a tribute, I thought that sort of balanced things out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/o...version=Full&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article

I was in Spain when Aznar conferred Spanish citizenship on all members of the Lincoln Brigade and remember reading very moving reports of the many elderly men who came to collect it.

Buen camino, Laurie

Thank you Laurie,

That was a deeply moving tribute. I'm in SJPDP, I start my Camino in the morning. I saw Picasso's Guenica in Madrid a few days ago. I saw it 50 years ago in New York while I was at art school. It is more passionate and powerful than ever.

At the risk of sounding too political (I was recently censored here) I'd just like to say that the sacrifices made by the selfless members of the International Brigades in joining the Spanish people to fight fascism have always inspired me. I'm in Spain right now largely because of an abiding fascination with that era.

I find that after two visits to Spain it seems to me that there's a strange reticence here about acknowledging that part of Spanish history. (just reread TaijiPilgrim's post and understand more. So tragic!)

Thank you Delmer for your courage and kindness. No pasaran!

 

[Mike Trebert]

'Ghosts of Spain' by Charles Tremlett is also a very informative and interesting book. I'm reading it at the moment, thanks to a recommendation on another thread.

Thanks, I also noticed that on a previous thread, it's on my short list.

 

[NualaOC]

I find that after two visits to Spain it seems to me that there's a strange reticence here about acknowledging that part of Spanish history. (just reread TaijiPilgrim's post and understand more. So tragic!)

Thanks, I also noticed that on a previous thread, it's on my short list.

That reticence/ silence is one of the central themes of this book. I'm making slow progress, but finding it very interesting. Buen Camino!

 

[mspath]

Such reticence/silence does seem often to be the public norm in Spain. A few years back I walked casually west from O Cebreiro with a 50 year old Spanish musician. Slogging along up hill and down for days we chatted openly in French/English about everything from paella to politics, including Franco. Always outside. However when inside and near other "ears" such political talk was for him a no-no.

 

[Seabird]

Thanks for sharing this. What an interesting story and tribute my McCain.

 

[tpmchugh]

In order to pay respect for all men/women that fought in Voluntarios Internacionales de la Libertad (International Brigades) I have walked on my Caminos for past two years with International Brigades flag/patch on my castro cap (see photo attached, taken at Cabo Finisterre after completion of my 2015 Camino combo).

Much to my surprise never had any problems about that even with Catholic priests. On the contrary, I've had many very interesting chats with locals and other Spaniards on the trail on that topic. Even nuns at monastery in Mora smilled when they (just two of them to be exact) saw it and asked me to recommend them to Santiago once in SdC. So I did.

No pasaran!

As you enter Galicia there is a house that flies the flag of the old Republic. Unfortunately I have not seen it. Meant to look out for it last time but forgot. By the way, did you know that the Republican forces reinvigorated by their success in the Maquis fighting the Nazis, invaded Spain in 1947, one of the attacks going through Roncesvalles. Because of the dictators complete and utter control of the media, very few people in Spain, even to this day have no idea it happened. The last of the guerilla leaders who refused to surrender was tracked down and murdered in the street by civil guards in 1960.
No Pasaran

 

[Kanga]

I think we are straying from Laurie's original post which was a homage to sacrifice by those who joined the Lincoln Brigade.

The reluctance to discuss the Civil War, and the events that preceded it, is because it is contentious. It is a simplification to say one side was right, the other wrong. Terrible attrocities were committed by both sides. If your parent, brother, sister, aunt, uncle was executed in cold blood, by one side or the other, you may hold passionate views, to this day.

The forum rule "no political discussion" will be enforced.

 

[rappahannock_rev]

I think we are straying from Laurie's original post which was a homage to sacrifice by those who joined the Lincoln Brigade.

The reluctance to discuss the Civil War, and the events that preceded it, is because it is contentious. It is a simplification to say one side was right, the other wrong. Terrible attrocities were committed by both sides. If your parent, brother, sister, aunt, uncle was executed in cold blood, by one side or the other, you may hold passionate views, to this day.

The forum rule "no political discussion" will be enforced.

Thank you, Kanga. I guess.

Recently, here on the Forum, and entirely w/o intending to make a political statement (although I concede that it might have been seen as doing that) this priest/history professor referenced a Hornillos priest shot in Madrid in 1936. And you censored me, and censored every reply that included my original post. That surprised me! That shocked! That hurt! Not every reference to the defining event of 20th century Spanish history must needs be "political," eh?

BUT -- "Vive la quince brigada!"? "No pasaran!"? "The sacrifices made by the selfless members of the International Brigades ...." Really?! These did not merit censoring, according to your proclaimed apolitical standard?

I suggest this thread be closed, dear girl, before war breaks out again. Pax!

 

[Mary Enright]

Thank you, Laurie. On Carlos Nunez' album called "Discover Carlos Nunez" is a powerful song about the 5th International Brigade. When I volunteered at an English immersion program in Spain, we were told we could speak with our Spanish counterparts about any topic EXCEPT the Civil War. The reason was that it still is so close to the hearts of many Spaniards, who lost family members and whose relatives and friends suffered under the Franco regime. Indeed, one of my English friends somehow got onto the topic and found herself caught between two Spaniards with passionate but opposing points of view.

If you liked Carlos Nunez, you will love Christy Moore (who wrote the song). It's on you tube.

 

[peregrina2000]

I think we should leave this as a loving tribute to the Lincoln Brigade, RIP.

 

[peregrina2000]

I have decided to add one last informational post because I have gotten PMs from forum members who really know very little about the Lincoln Brigade and would like to learn more. And this morning, I got a PM from a member telling me about a book that is soon to be published on this very topic. It gets very good pre-publication reviews, you can see it on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0547973187/?tag=casaivar02-20