Half 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.

What's a monument to the International Brigades doing on an amateur football pitch in East London? Football may always be political, for example, when Barça and Madrid play a Copa del Rey final Or when three ministers, from the PP or the PSOE, appear in the Bernabéu box? Probably. Football, moreover, is also personal memory and emotional ties between fathers, mothers, and sons and daughters. And it is also, of course, a collective history.

Mohand Ameziane Sail was an Algerian anarchist who fought in World War I defending France. He was watched because he was an anti-colonialist "agitator." In 1936, he came to Catalonia to join the POUM militia and fight against Franco. Bestani Belkacem, also Algerian, was 28 when he went to the Aragon front. Mohamed Hammis was an illiterate peasant and left Algeria at 43 to join the International Brigades. Jean-Joseph Akl was a Lebanese man who also fought in the Spanish Civil War.