Foreign women in the Civil War: adventurous and committed

It is well known that the experiment of the Second Republic sparked interest beyond our borders. But the Civil War, the work of the military who rose up against democracy in July 1936, dashed any revolutionary ambitions. Although those who threw themselves into defending the country from fascism, whether with weapons or with instruments like the pen or the camera, did not know it then.

We remember with gratitude the International Brigades, military units formed by foreign volunteers from some fifty countries, which also included women. The historian Dolors Marín (Hospitalet de Llobregat, 1957) has published Women of Fire. Internationalists in Catalonia (1936-1939)In this book, she rescues the stories of thirteen foreign women who came to our land to fight, whether as militia members at the front, as nurses in the rearguard, or as propagandists, columnists, photographers... Among them, the best known is Emma Goldman, a Lithuanian activist who dedicated herself here to spreading the ideas of anarcha-feminism, because this compilation of adventurous and committed lives is written with a gendered perspective.

Already in the final years of Primo de Rivera's dictatorship, Goldman had walked the streets of Barcelona. There she met some of the freethinkers whom the author studied in Spiritualists and freethinkers. Pioneering women in the fight for civil rights. like Teresa Claramunt. Upon her return, with the country already ablaze, she visited war fronts and displayed her oratory skills thanks to the good offices of translators. She also visited the Codorníu cellars, which had been collectivized, in the company of a large international delegation.

While the Parisian philosopher Simone Weil, who had spent the summer in Sitges with her family, joined the Durruti Column for a week, despite her physical frailty—although once on the Aragon front she was sent to the kitchen because she didn't know how to fire a Mauser or anything like it—the sound and its resemblance, the sound, surrealist photographers, crossed the border with a press visa and settled in the Hotel Majestic, where the foreign correspondents were staying. Cunard wrote chronicles and some poems about the war.

A Women of Fire We also find the photographers Margaret Michelis, a Polish woman who before the war had worked for GATCPAC thanks to her friendship with the architect Sert, and the Hungarian Kati Horna. Both worked for the CNT-FAI's Foreign Propaganda Committee. In their photographs, we find Barcelona's District V, the Boqueria Market, and the cabaret singers of Paral·lel. But also portraits of the Montjuïc stadium packed with displaced people.

We must thank the author for the wealth of documentation she has brought to light and also for recovering the stories of lesser-known women than those mentioned, such as Mary Low, a friend of Benjamin Péret—the partner of the painter Remedios Varo—or Mika Feldman, a dentist and militiawoman. A fine work of visibility and reparation. And an excellent complement to Rescued from oblivion. Following the screenings of foreign women who wrote about Spain, by Ana R. Cañil, published this year by Galaxia Gutenberg.