Original pair of alpagatas stamped with Republican coat of arms and words “Suministro militar” (military supply). Orwell wrote about militia fighters wearing them in -10 in Aragón.
Sweden. För Spanien, Stockholm 1938.
Abraham Lincoln Battalion pin sold in New York in 1939. Note that the Liberty Bell is cracked as it should be.
Condor legion iB1E ncendiary bomb tail. Found on the Madrid front.Condor. The B1E was used in the destruction of Guernica.
Corps Sanitaire Belge pour l'Espagne Republicaine. Sector Jeunesse.
Yugoslavian women's magazine Panorama, dated 29 August 1936, featuring a several-page photo report on the start of the Spanish Civil War.
Matches produced by the collectivised chemical industries (Industrias químicas colectivizadas) of the CNT. Republican Spain, 1936-39.
Amercian relief ship for Spain. USA, 1938.
American relief organisations raised some 125,000 dollars (about 2.3 million today) during the war (of which 98,000 was sent after costs). US trade unions raised a further 32,000. (570,000 today.) American Relief Aid and the Spanish Civil War
A selection of tins found in a Republican trench on the Segre front. France, Norway and condensed milk from Spain.
Spanish Republican constitution.
Passed in December 1931, the Republican constitution created a secular democratic system based on equal rights for all citizens, with provision for regional autonomy. It introduced female suffrage, civil marriage and divorce, and established free, obligatory, secular education for all. Article 3 of the Constitution stated that Spain has no official religion. The Catholic Church was stripped of its privileges and separated from the State.
Postcards of Estampas de la Revolución by Sim. Printed in Barcelona, 1936. .‘Sim’ was the pseudonym of José Luis Rey Vila, a Spanish artist who travelled with the Republican militias after the immediate outbreak of the rebellion in July 1936, drawing scenes of the war as he went. Born in 1910, Sim trained at the Escuela de Belles Artes (School of Fine Arts) in Barcelona and became radicalised as a soldier during the Rif War in Morocco in the 1920s. His civil war sketches were published as Estampas de la Revolución Española 19 Julio de 1936 by the anarchist CNT-FAI, and became the most widely known art of the civil war until Pablo Picasso’s Guernica in 1937. Editions were printed in Spanish, French and English, and distributed worldwide to raise awareness and funds for the Spanish antifascist movement. Estampas was followed by a new series of drawings, 12 Escenas de Guerra, which were also released as calendars and postcards during 1937-38. In addition, Sim created posters for the Catalan regional government (Generalitat), and exhibitions of his work were held in London and New York under the auspices of the Spanish Popular Front. After the war, he was exiled to Paris and continued to produce artwork, this time under his real name (Rey Vila). He died in 1983.Morris Brodie is a historian working on international anarchism during the Spanish Civil War.
https://qub.academia.edu/MorrisBrodie
https://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/happ/Research/PhDResearchStudents/PhDResearchStudentProfiles/MorrisBrodie-studentprofile/
People's Olympiad pin, 1936. The Olimpíada Popular was an international anti-rascist sports event organised in Barcelona as a protest against the Nazi Olympic Games in Berlin. It was due to begin on 19 July 1936, but had to be cancelled because of start of the Spanish Civil War.
Bus ticket issued by the collectived bus company of the CNT. Barcelona. 1936-39.
Gum cards featuring scenes from the Spanish Civil War from the series "To know the horrors of war is to want peace." Produced by Gum.Inc in Philadelphia, 1938.
Documents for member of Red Cross in Barcelona. 1937. The Red Cross was a recipient of international aid.
Urdu edition of Homage to Catalonia, translated into Urdu by S.M. Mazahir and given as a donation to Poble-sec library by his nephew.
Image provided by Biblioteques de Barcelona.
East European stamps commemorating the International Brigades
10 inch record. Canti Della Guerra Di Spagna. Italy. 196xxx
LPs. Songs of the Spanish Civil War, Volumes 1 & 2 - Smithsonian Folkways
(1961) Pete Seeger and Group / Ernst Busch and Chorus.
Series of four bookmarks produced by the Catalan government in 2017. They bear the words "We were once refugees" and feature scenes of Republican refugees at the French border in 1939 and contemporary scenes of refugees today.
In the absence of a physical museum for the time being to the Spanish Civil War, specifically in Barcelona, this site is intended as the beginning of a virtual museum, comprising real artifacts from the war and its consequences. The objects and documents come from the collection owned by the Walking museum of the Spanish Civil War and from images of artifacts and documents loaned by individuals and organisations from around the world, many of which will tell a story. It is currently only in English but plans to be available in at least Spanish and Catalan in the future.
The wwbsute grew out of the now-shelved Amigce project presided over by Paul Preston to build a museum to the war in Barcelona, covered in The Guardian. The website was begun in June 2018 and is still at a very early stage. Imagine, if you will, walking around a museum in which a few exhibits are on display, yet electricians and painters are at work in the same rooms, stuff is piled up in boxes and indeed walls are being built at the same time
The Amigce declaration:
The Spanish Civil War was the prologue of the Second World War and an event key to understanding the history of the 20th century. Despite its international reach and although there are various interpretation centres concerning specific aspects of it, or specific sections within general history museums, there has yet to be created a major museum that can offer a comprehensive view of the facts.
The absence of such a specialized museum is largely due to the characteristics of the transition from the Franco regime to a parliamentary Monarchy. This process was based on a tacit agreement among political parties that resulted in a social and institutional silence on the war and its consequences. That agreed upon silence, which was superimposed by four decades of dictatorial distortion of history, constituted an agreement by this oversight in exchange for peace. After 30 years since the end of that period, we face the paradox that interest in the facts that occurred years ago and the need for memory still remain, while there is a lack of knowledge about the Civil War, especially among the young.
Image: Liberty Bell. Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. New York 1939.
