war

The Civil War dugouts in Montgai were defaced in the last days of 2017 as “harm just for harm’s sake”

The creator of a DNA bank to find the disappeared said that even the possibility of historical memory policies being in danger is “an attack on democracy”

Lleida dig uncovers bodies from both sides of conflict as excavation program put on hold due to direct rule 

Considered to be the longest and bloodiest battle in the Spanish Civil War, this is the fourth edition of the event

“It’s impossible to understand how in 2017, some 80 years after that disgrace, hundreds of our people are still missing,” says Catalan foreign affairs minister

The Catalan journalist Andreu Caralt presents the book “3,669 biberons” (3,669 baby bottles), that explains the story of the “Survivors of the Baby Bottle Regiment of ’41”, the youngest recruits in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War

President Rajoy’s opening of new hotel where hundreds were killed in 1707 makes many Lleida inhabitants very uncomfortable

Miquel Morera is one of the last remaining witnesses of a brutal conflict that left half a million dead and forced nearly as many to flee the country

Outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 made it impossible for 5,000 athletes to take part in People’s Games planned for the city

Three men of different skin colors hold a white flag in the official poster designed by German Jewish refugee

The Catalan Government will guard geographer and journalist Gonzalo de Reparaz Rodríguez-Báez’ legacy, which was seized in 1939 and has been stored at the Spanish Civil War Archives since then. The Catalan Minister for Territory and Sustainability, Josep Rull, thanked Reparaz’s family for trusting the Catalan Government and praised their years of “judicial struggle” to recover the documents, and therefore part of its family’s history. Rull emphasized Reparaz’s contribution “to explaining the Catalan cause to Europe” and his “commitment to freedom and democracy”. Reparaz established himself in Barcelona in 1921 and came into contact with many representatives of Catalonia’s political and cultural life.

Barcelona and London, the capital cities of Catalonia and the United Kingdom, suffered sustained bombardments by fascist air forces during the first half of the 20th century. Coinciding with the 80th anniversary of the aerial bombing of Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, the Public Diplomacy Council of Catalonia (Diplocat) together with the European Observatory on Memories (Eurom) and in collaboration with the University of Brighton organized a conference at London’s Imperial War Museum to share Catalonia and United Kingdom’s history under the fascist bombs. The commemorative event gathered together representatives from the Catalan Government, mayors of some of the cities who suffered the most under the fascist aviation attacks, British politicians, such as Chris Bambery, former spokesman for the APPG on Catalonia, and researchers and historians from both the UK and Catalonia specialized in the Great World Wars.

The Spanish Parliament approved a bill this Thursday presented by the Spanish Socialist Party aimed at removing the mortal remains of the two dictators Francisco Franco and José Antonio Primo de Rivera’s from the Valle de los Caídos basilica. The text calls for this monumental complex to “stop being a Francoist and national-catholic landmark” and to instead be turned into “a space for reconciliation and collective and democratic memory, aimed at dignifying and recognizing the victims of the Spanish Civil War and of the dictatorship”. Although it was a non-binding proposal, the governing Spanish Conservative, People’s Party (PP), abstained from voting. Catalan left-wing pro-independence ERC also abstained, but because they considered the proposal to be insufficient.

On the 80th anniversary of the Guernica Bombing, Spain’s denial of historical justice or reparation of its civil war victims was the focus of a conference at the European Parliament. NGO’s, relatives of Spanish Civil War victims and the Francoist dictatorship, and MEPs called on the European Parliament to help promote “truth, justice, and reparation”. Roger Heredia, co-founder of the DNA bank for civil war victim identification in Catalonia said that “the Spanish State systematically violates human rights” and insisted on the necessity of raising awareness among the European MPs about how Spain ignores reports from both the Human Rights Council and the UN-Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.

Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder and Julio González are the protagonists of ‘Art revolutionaries’, a major exhibition which opened in London this Wednesday and will reproduce the Pavilion of the Spanish Republic from the 1937 Paris International Exposition. Catalan gallery Mayoral is the name responsible for the initiative, which aims to pay tribute “to those artists which were committed to democracy and freedom in the middle of Spanish Civil War”, Mayoral’s director, Jordi Mayoral, told the CNA. The Republican Pavilion displayed works by these artists and became a strategic platform to vindicate the tragic situation the country was going through. The exhibition includes archival documents to contextualise the artworks and “immerse the visitor in the Republican atmosphere”, added Mayoral.