Free Republic

On March 4, the world´s oldest person, Maria Branyas Morera, celebrated her 117th birthday in Catalonia. Morera was born in San Francisco, USA, but returned to Spain with her family at the age of eight, spending the rest of her life in Catalonia. For the past 23 years, she has stayed in the nursing home, Residencia Santa Maria del Tura. “Order, tranquillity, good connection with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity and staying away from toxic people” is what Morera credits her health and longevity to. Morera´s family arrived in Barcelona...

This is an obituary about a dead communist lawyer, not particularly thrilling; but you must read it to see who interned at his radical firm back in 1971. Amazing what gets printed in the New York Times: December 2, 2001Robert Treuhaft, Lawyer Who Inspired Funeral Exposé, Dies at 89 By PAUL LEWIS Robert Treuhaft, a crusading radical lawyer who inspired his wife, Jessica Mitford, to write her best seller "The American Way of Death," died in New York on Nov. 11. He was 89. As a union lawyer representing longshoremen in the San Francisco area in the 1950's, Mr. Treuhaft ...

America is definitely not Europe, but we can find a number of parallels between European history and contemporary America. For example, we’ve previously written about the Italian Years of Lead as a possible template for urban unrest and low-level inter-tribal warfare in the United States. Another example of how things might play out in the United States is the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Civil War is known to historians, amateur and professional alike, as the “dress rehearsal for the Second World War.” It is so termed because it pitted one side – which was equipped, armed and funded by...

America is definitely not Europe, but we can find a number of parallels between European history and contemporary America. For example, we’ve previously written about the Italian Years of Lead as a possible template for urban unrest and low-level inter-tribal warfare in the United States. Another example of how things might play out in the United States is the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Civil War is known to historians, amateur and professional alike, as the “dress rehearsal for the Second World War.” It is so termed because it pitted one side – which was equipped, armed and funded by...

In a waist-high trench alongside Spain’s national Highway 1, a dozen volunteers wearing rubber gloves brush tan clay from crumbling human bones. Their knees rest on foam cushions, and a white tent shades them from the summer sun. It’s July 2011—a full 75 summers after Spain erupted in the Civil War that put the bones of 59 civilians in the ground here. A few steps away from the trench, volunteers hold microphones up to the murmuring mouths of elders from the town of Gumiel de Izán, in the north-central region of Castilla y León. The elders, who harbor memories of...

It is not too many centurions, particularly 100-year-old-plus writers, whose vision of the world is as relevant today as it was when first shared with the public over half a century ago. It is this vision of Orwell, the X-ray view through the cant, platitudes and lies to that ugliest of human drives, the lust for powers absolute, that still distinguishes the British writer, born 112 years ago this week on June 25, 1903. He was only 46 when he died on January 21, 1950. It is his frightening acuity that keeps him not only in the pantheon but even...

It may seem improbable to consider that St. John of the Cross, the Spanish Civil War, and JRR Tolkien have anything in common. However, all three share one important connection: the South African poet Roy Campbell, and therein lies a tale of intrigue, bravery and faith. This remarkable narrative is set against the upheaval of the Spanish Civil War of the 1930’s. There was much unrest in Spain leading up to the elections of February 1936, as ordinary Spaniards from various factions sought to oust the Republican junta. This tension evolved into full-blown riots that swept through the entire...

The Vatican has proclaimed 95 more martyrs of the Spanish Civil War. On June 3, with the approval of Pope Francis, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints issued four separate decrees, recognizing the martyrdom of: Mauro Abel Angelo Palazuelos Maruri and 17 Benedictine companions, who were killed in 1936;Joan of Jesus Vilaregut Ferre and 3 companions, Discalced Carmelites, who were killed along with Father Paul Segala Sole in 1936;Crisanto Casimiro Gonzalez Garcia, Aquilino Baldomer Baro Riera, and Cipriano Jose Julian Iglesias Banuelos; who were killed along with 63 Marist companioins and 2 laymen between 1946 and 1939; andAurelia Clementina...

Columbia: Anatomy of Anarchy Malcolm A. Kline, July 1, 2010 For most of the past half century, Columbia University has provided endless fodder for news outlets such as ours. Indeed, as Accuracy in Academia discovered, the campus left has veto power over not just the curriculum but extracurricular activities as well. Actually, left-wing student groups have been active at the crown of the Ivy League for about the past century. What changed is the attitude of the administration there: from indulgence to surrender. From the turn of the last century to the end of World War II, Columbia practiced peaceful...

Sixteen crates locked in a dark store room in Madrid for more than 70 years hold the secret to how General Franco might have won the Spanish Civil War. Inside the crates are Enigma code-making machines that Franco had bought from Nazi Germany and used to co-ordinate his troops who fought on fronts hundreds of miles apart. The 26 machines were discovered this week by the Spanish daily newspaper El País, hidden in army headquarters since the Civil War ended in 1939, most still in perfect condition. The Enigma machines gave Franco's Nationalists a crucial advantage because their code was...

Tolling the Red Bell by: Malcolm A. Kline, June 09, 2008 For many a decade, schoolchildren of all ages have been taught to revere the alleged heroism of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade that fought the forces marshaled by Generalisimo Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Since Franco received aid from Hitler in the 1930s in his effort to dislodge the government supported by the Soviet Union, the story goes, taking arms against Il Claudio was the equivalent of firing the first salvo at the Nazis. One year ago, for instance, the University of Washington screened “Souls Without Borders,” a...

The Last Crusade: Spain 1936By Warren Carroll(Christendom Press/ISI Books, 240 pages, $15) WHEN THE HEROICS of the Spanish Civil War come up -- Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, Hemingway's fictions or the effusions of various poets -- there is a very large and usually unremarked elephant in the room: Orwell, who actually fought, and Hemingway who wrote about fighting, were on the wrong side. The strategic point is simple: had the Stalinists won war, then during the period of the Hitler-Stalin pact from 1939 to mid-1941, they would have allowed Hitler to cross Spain and seize Gibraltar. Had this happened, the...

JOSEPH LIEBERMAN, Democratic senator from Connecticut and independent candidate for a new term, shared a remarkable insight in Hartford on August 22. He commented, in an interview with talk radio host Glenn Beck, "Iraq, if you look back at it, is going to be like the Spanish Civil War, which was the harbinger of what was to come."The Spanish strife of 1936-39 remains, seventy years after it began, one of the central incidents of the century we lately left behind. And it offers numerous precedents for the global war on terror.Lieberman probably intended to express little more than the standard...

Lord, Keep our Troops forever in Your care Give them victory over the enemy... Grant them a safe and swift return... Bless those who mourn the lost. . FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer for all those serving their country at this time. .................................................................. .................... ........................................... U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues Where Duty, Honor and Countryare acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated. Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should...

July 16, 2001/Vol 6, Number 41 The Red and the Black The end of the myth of the Spanish Civil War By Stephen Schwartz The Spanish Civil War—the conflict from 1936 to 1939 between the mainly socialist and anarchist militias defending the Spanish Republic, and the right-wing forces headed by General Francisco Franco—is often described as the last purely idealistic cause of the twentieth century. Certainly this is how the intellectual tradition of the Left remembers it. For radical writers, theorists, and activists in America and England, nothing looms larger than those days when pure-hearted idealists from around the world...

Ranks of those who volunteered to fight Franco are thinning OAKLAND -- Some of the few remaining veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, who volunteered in 1937 to fight in the Spanish Civil War, gathered Sunday to listen to music and remember fellow veterans. Each year at their annual West Coast reunion, the ranks of the brigade thin. This year 12 veterans took the stage, some with the help of walkers and canes, to take a bow in front of 450 supporters in the Calvin Simmons Theater. According to Linda Lusting, who helped organize the event, nationwide between 75 and...

Andrew Weiss November 29, 1998 The History of Europe from 1715   Homage to Catalonia and The Spanish Civil War In the 1952 novel, Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell relates his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. In 1937 Orwell traveled to Spain to cover The Spanish Civil War for a British newspaper, but soon after he arrived he joined the P.O.U.M Militia and fought against Franciso Franco. The Spanish Civil War started when Franco, a Spanish general, led a revolt against the republican government. Franco, although not a fascist himself, was backed by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the Spanish...

Anarchists and the fine art of torture Spanish art historian says they put enemies in disorienting cells Giles Tremlett in Madrid Monday January 27, 2003 The Guardian A Spanish art historian has uncovered what was alleged to be the first use of modern art as a deliberate form of torture, with the discovery that mind-bending prison cells were built by anarchist artists 65 years ago during the country's bloody civil war. Bauhaus artists such as Kandinsky, Klee and Itten, as well as the surrealist film-maker Luis Bunuel and his friend Salvador Dali, were said to be the inspiration behind a...

A Spanish art historian has uncovered what was alleged to be the first use of modern art as a deliberate form of torture, with the discovery that mind-bending prison cells were built by anarchist artists 65 years ago during the country's bloody civil war. Bauhaus artists such as Kandinsky, Klee and Itten, as well as the surrealist film-maker Luis Bunuel and his friend Salvador Dali, were said to be the inspiration behind a series of secret cells and torture centres built in Barcelona and elsewhere, yesterday's El Pais newspaper reported. Most were the work of an enthusiastic French anarchist, Alphonse...

I apologize for the VANITY, but I've exhausted other options.I am looking for the title of a book on the Spanish Civil War, probably published in 2002 (maybe 2001) that I saw reviewed earlier this year. Ring any bells? It addressed the interaction among the Socialists, the Anarchist, and the POUM, and spent a lot of time describing the treachery of the Communists.