The 'Pasionaria of New Zealand' finally gets a passport full of history and memory

LondonHalf a century after the death of Franco, the New Zealand Pasionaria Dolores Ibárruri Hoy has finally obtained her Spanish passport. She is not related by blood to the leader of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), but in a way she is an heir through history and family memory. She is not from the Gallarta mining region in Vizcaya—not even close. In fact, she was born in 1963 practically on the other side of the world: in Lower Hutt, about 14 kilometres from Wellington, the capital of the southern country, where she currently lives.

She, her sister Penny Hoy, and the two children of her — Robin and Zoe Franziska Mack — are among the 171 people who have recently obtained Spanish citizenship "by naturalization". In total, there are 54 sons and daughters and 117 grandsons and granddaughters of the anti-fascist volunteers of the International Brigades who have already benefited from the procedure provided in 2022 for the democratic memory law, according to the decree approved by the government of Pedro Sánchez on last November 4th.

Penny and Dolores Ibárruri are the daughters of James Hoy, a volunteer from Liverpool. He was born in 1910, and he arrived in Spain on 5 May 1937. He was part of the 14th John Bown Artillery Battery, attached to the Anglo-American Battalion, and, like most of the international volunteers, he left Spain from Barcelona in 1938, when the Republic was forced to fight without those heroes "of solidarity and the universality of democracy", according to the famous words of La Pasionaria. “It is quite possible that [James Hoy] heard to deliver the farewell speech at the International Brigades" on 1 November. "My father named me Dolores Ibárruri because he admired her way of speaking in public,” she told ARA via email from Wellington.

But in practice, the first surname of La Pasionaria (Ibárruri) functions for Dolores Ibárruri today much like an Anglo-Saxon middle name — a second legal name that forms part of a person’s full identity, although it is rarely used in everyday life.

After fighting in World War II with the British Army and being seriously wounded in combat, James Hoy emigrated to the other side of the world in 1954, where he and his wife, Maureen, started a family. In New Zealand, he worked on the docks, loading and unloading ships, and also played a prominent role as a trade unionist. He died on December 18, 1997. "I am honored to have received Spanish nationality", Dolores comments. "For me, it is a way to honor the memory of my father and many others who, like him, went to Spain to defend democracy and fight against fascism. That gesture would have touched his heart. I am sure he would have been happy for his family maintained a lasting connection with Spain"

More than three decades ago, José Manuel Lara, the founder of the Planeta Publishers empire –who entered in Barcelona in 1939 with Franco’s troops as a captain in the Legion–, told this reporter in his office on Carrer de Còrsega, in tha capital of Catalonia, that he had personally tasted the seemingly legendary spanish omelet made by La Pasionaria in Moscow—months before the PCE leader was allowed to return to Spain. As if it were another emotional link to his time as a brigadista, James Hoy also made the omelet, in this case for his daughters. "He made it every Saturday. His time in Spain was important for the person he became. He truly believed in defending the Republican cause."

Last year, Dolores visited Spain to see the places where she knew her father had been stationed with the International Brigades. She also took the opportunity to visit the memorial at the Complutense University of Madrid and Roy Shifrin's sculpture in the Carmel neighborhood of Barcelona.

A much more distant memory

James Hoy's granddaughter, Zoe Franziska, an environmentalist and climate policy specialist, attended a ceremony at the Spanish Embassy in the UK on December 1. There, symbolically, instead of receiving her physical passport, her Spanish nationality was formally recognized. Alongside her—the only member of the Hoy family able to attend—the new citizenship was celebrated for 23 other relatives of brigadistas who completed the process through Spanish consulates in the UK, without having to renounce their original citizenship.

Zoe Franziska Mack was six years old when her grandfather died. She does not have many memories of him and is relatively unfamiliar with the complexities of La Pasionaria, a multifaceted historical figure. Nevertheless, Zoe connects her family history to the current political context, giving her new status a sense of continuity and purpose: "In a way, being able to have a Spanish passport is like a posthumous gift from my grandfather, the legacy of his commitment," she told ARA. "It's a tribute and a remembrance of my grandfather and the brigadistas in general, representing a symbol of struggle and resistance against fascism. Perhaps another Spanish government wouldn't have done it."

Representing the families of the brigadistas, Peter Crome, 77, son of Len Crome—a pathologist born in Latvia and trained in Scotland who joined the Brigades in January 1937—spoke at the ceremony. He rose to become head of medical services for the 15th Army Corps, one of the units that took part in the Battle of the Ebro. As a doctor, he was notable for his work improvising field hospitals; he also played a very important role at the Cave of Santa Llúcia in La Bisbal de Montsant. His son, also a doctor, considers the recognition from the Spanish government "a great honor." "We weren’t expecting it. Of course, it is an honor that belongs to our parents and grandparents, and for that we are grateful," he says. Len Crome served, until his death in 2001, as president of the International Brigade Memorial Trust, the non-profit organization that preserves the memory and legacy of the volunteers.

The Original Ceremony, from 2009

The ceremony on December 1, presided over by Ambassador José Pascual Marco in his final mission at the Court of St. James, had its roots in another event held more than 16 years earlier, on June 9, 2009. In the same ballroom of the same embassy building, some of the last surviving brigadistas received their passports, then physically. That date followed the 2007 Historical Memory Law, promoted by the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, which allowed people to obtain Spanish nationality without renouncing their original citizenship.

The following individuals attended: Sam Lesser, 94, then president of the International Brigade Memorial Trust; Patrick Vincent Cochrane, 96; Thomas Watters, also 96; Jack Edwards, 95; Lou Kenton, 99; and Penny Feiwel, a centenarian and the last surviving woman among those heroes and heroines, who would pass away on January 6, 2011. The Spanish ambassador to the United Kingdom at the time, the writer and diplomat Carles Casajuana, presented the seven with their documents, emphasizing that "their ideals form part of the foundations of our democracy."

The son of an eighth brigadista, Mick Jones, posthumously received the passport of his father, Jack Jones, who had died the previous April at the age of 96. Geoffrey Servante was also absent due to health reasons. He was the last survivor of the International Brigades, would pass away on April 21, 2019, just weeks shy of his 100th birthday.

At that event sixteen years ago, which this reporter had the privilege of attending, Lesser’s eyes—as did those of many present—were filled with tears as he remembered his comrades who had died in Spain. It is estimated that 20% of the 30,000 to 35,000 International Brigades members from around the world who fought against fascism during the Spanish Civil War lost their lives; a similar proportion applied to the 2,400 who came from the United Kingdom and Ireland. Lesser stated in Spanish: "I believe that today we can tell you, Mother, that we have come home; yes, we have arrived. In these moments of joy and emotion, we think of those who have not; we think, above all, of those whose shroud is the soil of Spain, and who sleep forever under the sun and the shade, under the clouds, the rain, and the olive trees of this beloved Spain."

Some, like many other victims of Franco’s regime, still lie in unexhumed mass graves. This was the case for International Brigades fighter Eddie Swinddels, a young man born in 1912 in one of Manchester’s poorest neighbourhoods, who arrived in Spain on December 1, 1936, after travelling from London to Paris on a round-trip train ticket. To close the event, historian Richard Baxell, a specialist in the International Brigades, spoke about his story. Swinddels died in February 1937 at the Battle of Jarama.

Swinddels never had a passport—neither British nor, of course, Spanish. The train ticket, paid for by the Communist Party, allowed him to circumvent the requirement of possessing a passport to leave the United Kingdom. He and four other comrades headed south, crossed the Pyrenees, and joined the anti-fascist cause. His remains are among the approximately 500 that, according to Jim Jump, current president of the IBMT, still lie in Spain, a country that, fifty years after Franco’s death, has yet to exhume all the Civil War mass graves.