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My mother, that stranger : letters from the Spanish Civil War
\"Over eight-hundred letters were written between the author's newly-engaged parents during the time that her father was on the Republican war front fighting against Franco's forces, and her mother awaiting the end of the war. Her father, Professor Juan Luis Alborg, would live to become a well-known literary historian and critic. Her mother's life, on the other hand, was overshadowed by her husband's academic celebrity. The letters were discovered whilst preparing for a symposium marking the centenary of her father's birth, celebrated at the University of Malaga in 2014. This unique memoir is a microhistory of the Spanish Civil War at an individual level; it illuminates the 'official story' as told in history books at multiple levels. Her mother's personal narrative adds to the understanding of this significant time because she shows how a family lived in the midst of war. A primary relevance is that she lived in Valencia, which in November 1936 become the official capital of the Republican government. Working in a government co-op gave her an insider's view of the ongoing political and military situation. She describes the contrasting burdens between family life in Valencia, and the life of her fiancâe soldier on the southern frontlines. The author's mother is exemplary of the women who were formed under the liberal Second Spanish Republic (1931-39) only to be silenced during Franco's repressive dictatorship (1939-75). The long-lost letters made Concha Alborg realize how little she understood her mother's passion to set down complex feelings in the most difficult of circumstances. My Mother, That Stranger will be of interest to Hispanists, historians and literary critics for its uniqueness on the epistolary genre and gender studies, and to the general public as a heartfelt family memoir\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Making Monuments from Mass Graves in Contemporary Spain
This book narrates how, beginning in 1936, bodies buried in mass graves during the Spanish War and subsequent dictatorship were turned into monuments. The book describes how the production of monuments evolved and what forms this process and these monuments took; it examines how the monuments were incorporated into society and used to influence public opinion; and it argues that this process was not simply based on the formal logic of tradition but instead reflected a conscious plan with a specific and rational end goal. As such, this book puts forward the idea that the monument as a material object became an expression of the historical consciousness of its producers, relating how different actors communicated their memories into meaningful gestures while limited by the material reality of integrating the bodies into a novel artefact. Finally, it contends that the people creating these monuments did not just bury their dead according to a funerary tradition but also sought to influence society.
eBook
The Monument of Tomorrow
Rupture, iconoclasm, and tabula rasa are concepts commonly used to describe the approach to cultural heritage associated with the avant-garde and revolutionary politics during the early twentieth century. Highlighting artists and radical intellectuals who worked to protect public monuments in 1910–1950s Spain, The Monument of Tomorrow challenges the persistent narrative, imposed by Francoism, of an iconoclastic Second Republic in Spain.
Author Miguel Caballero draws on a wide range of sources to examine how artists, architects, writers, and activists transformed monument and heritage conservation into a progressive, experimental cause in their fight against fascism. During the Spanish War, with its devastating air raids, these individuals were motivated by the “defense of culture” to become determined conservationists. Caballero’s research incorporates surviving monuments, architectural plans, propaganda posters, and literary works, including novels, plays, and poetry. The war became a laboratory for experiments in conserving and redefining monuments and national heritage. Modernist-style protective structures, for example, were built atop Madrid’s historic monuments, including statues of Cybele, Neptune, and Phillip III in Plaza Mayor. Such innovations later influenced strategies for safeguarding monuments during the Second World War. This history, Caballero argues, makes the Spanish War pivotal to development of the concept of World Heritage.
Ultimately, The Monument of Tomorrow demonstrates that heritage conservation does not have to be politically conservative. Those interested in anti-fascism, art history, modern architecture, modernism, cultural heritage, conservation and preservation, Iberian studies, and war studies should find valuable insights in this innovative, original work.
eBook
Janus in the Metropole: Moroccan soldiers and sexual violence against women in the Spanish civil war
Approximately 80,000 Moroccan men fought on the side of Franco in the Spanish Civil War. When the colonial wars ended, those men were recruited from very poor villages (some of them at the age of 16). Although the core collective memory that remains about those Moroccan troops ('the Regulars') concerns absolute cruelty, particularly towards women, they also form part of the history of the Spanish colonisation. During the Civil War, Franco's General Queipo de Llano promised that the 'castrated' Republican soldiers' women would know about the 'virility' of those Moroccan troops. Departing from fragmented historical data, this contribution presents a brief critical victimological analysis of grey zones and 'Janus' characters to better understand the complexities of victim and victimiser that overlap in the contexts of victimhood, accountability, colonisation, war and violence against women.
Journal Article
Desertion
Theodore McLauchlin's Desertion examines the personal and political factors behind soldiers' choices to stay in their unit or abandon their cause. He explores what might spur widespread desertion in a given group, how some armed groups manage to keep their soldiers fighting over long periods, and how committed soldiers are to their causes and their comrades. To answer these questions, McLauchlin focuses on combatants in military units during the Spanish Civil War. He pushes against the preconception that individual soldiers' motivations are either personal or political, either selfish or ideological. Instead, he draws together the personal and the political, showing how soldiers come to trust each other—or not. Desertion demonstrates how the armed groups that hold together and survive are those that foster interpersonal connections, allowing soldiers the opportunity to prove their commitment to the fight. McLauchlin argues that trust keeps soldiers in the fray, mistrust pushes them to leave, and political beliefs and military practices shape both. Desertion brings the reader into the world of soldiers and rigorously tests the factors underlying desertion. It asks, honestly and without judgment, what would you do in an army in a civil war? Would you stand and fight? Would you try to run away? And what if you found yourself fighting for a cause you no longer believe in or never did in the first place?
eBook
‘Oh Ireland! What a Disappointment You Have Been to the Basque People’: Irish Non-Intervention in the Spanish Civil War
While Irish involvement on both sides of the Spanish Civil War has been comprehensively accounted for by historians, there remains the issue of the Irish government’s non-intervention in the conflict, even by way of moral support, for the democratic mandate of the Spanish Republic, including the recently established Basque autonomous government. Utilising several previously unexploited Basque primary sources, this article traces and highlights Basque nationalist hopes and expectations around possible Irish government interventions, and how Basque nationalists ultimately felt let down by their ostensible Irish allies. Despite this disappointment, the prevailing pre-civil war perception among Basque nationalists of Ireland as a beacon of national liberation and a spiritual ally of sorts to the Basques was to endure. In exploring Basque-Irish contacts and relations around the Spanish Civil War, the article touches on several interrelated themes, such as misunderstood solidarity, the fate of small stateless nations, the realpolitik of international relations, and historical memory.
Journal Article
