¡Ay Carmela!

Spanish loyalists patrol the street, 1937

Paul Robeson singing "L’Internationale" for Republican Troops in Tarazona, 1938

Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) patrolling the streets

Tom Mooney Company of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion

Confederación Nacional Del Trabajo (CNT) rally

Spanish anarcho-syndicalist Buenaventura Durruti

Abraham Lincoln Battalion volunteers, circa 1937

Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas (JSU) fighters

Oliver Law (far left) with the Abraham Lincoln Battalion

Insurgents during the Asturias miner's strike, 1934

U.S. volunteers from the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, Spring 1938

17 year old Marina Ginestà of the JSU

Unknown Spanish militants, circa 1937

Members of the JSU in Mauthausen concentration camp

Abraham Lincoln Battalion volunteers return to New York City

"Together with all this there was something of the evil atmosphere of war. The town had a gaunt untidy look, roads and buildings were in poor repair, the streets at night were dimly lit for fear of air-raids, the shops were mostly shabby and half-empty. Meat was scarce and milk practically unobtainable, there was a shortage of coal, sugar, and petrol, and a really serious shortage of bread. Even at this period the bread-queues were often hundreds of yards long. Yet so far as one could judge the people were contented and hopeful. There was no unemployment, and the price of living was still extremely low; you saw very few conspicuously destitute people, and no beggars except the Gypsies. Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine."

Photograph of Marina Ginestà by Juan Guzmán

Words by George Orwell from Homage To Catalonia, 1938