They left behind jobs, families and cities that many would never see again. Some had already experienced prison, underground resistance or exile. Others had barely any military experience. They arrived in a country whose language they did not always understand to defend a republic they saw as part of a shared struggle.
The International Brigades were one of the most powerful expressions of twentieth-century antifascist internationalism. Their history helps us understand what it means to stand beside a people when doing so requires risking your own life.
Spain was their struggle too
The military coup of July 1936 met resistance that prevented an immediate victory and led to the Civil War. While Hitler and Mussolini supported the insurgents, the policy of non-intervention promoted by Britain and France restricted the Republic’s ability to defend itself.
For many labour activists and antifascists, events in Spain had an unmistakable international dimension. Fascism had destroyed political organisations and trade unions, persecuted its opponents, and made racism and violence instruments of power. Allowing it another victory meant strengthening it throughout Europe.
In September 1936, the Communist International called on its parties to organise the recruitment of volunteers. The International Brigades were established that autumn, with their main base in Albacete. International Brigade Memorial Trust timeline.
Solidarity needed organisation
The journey to Spain required contacts, money, documents, accommodation and transport. Communist parties played a central role in the networks that enabled many volunteers to cross France and reach Republican territory. In Albacete they received training and were assigned to units. IBMT: the networks bringing volunteers to Spain.
Among them were communists, socialists and antifascists of other convictions. They shared opposition to Franco and a determination to defend the Republic. Many came from the labour movement, bringing experience of trade union organisation, strikes and political resistance.
Solidarity became a structure capable of sustaining the fighting. It also needed interpreters, drivers, medical personnel and supply organisers. The medical work of volunteers such as the New Zealand surgeon Douglas Jolly shows how helping Spain meant putting knowledge and skills at the service of a collective cause. IBMT: Douglas Jolly and battlefield medicine.
Madrid: when internationalism reached the front
In November 1936, Madrid became a decisive test. The arrival of the first international units strengthened a defence sustained by Republican soldiers, militias and a mobilised population.
In Casa de Campo and University City, volunteers from different countries shared positions, dangers and losses with the Spanish defenders. The frontal assault on the capital failed. History of the Commune de Paris Battalion.
Their contribution formed part of a collective resistance we have explored in Madrid, 1936: the people who made ‘They shall not pass’ their own. It also introduces Dolores Ibárruri, La Pasionaria, whose voice became forever associated with the city’s defence.
The Brigades went on to fight on fronts including Jarama, Brunete, Teruel and the Ebro. Experience made them units of considerable military importance, although fighting and casualties steadily depleted their ranks. IBMT: the Brigades’ military contribution.
The Americans who chose to fight fascism
Among the international volunteers were approximately 2,800 Americans. Many arrived in 1937 and fought in units such as the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. Joining the Jarama front brought them into a war for which many newcomers had received little preparation.
Black and white volunteers served together in an experience that contrasted with segregation in the United States. The African American communist Oliver Law became commander of the Lincoln Battalion before being killed at the Battle of Brunete in July 1937. Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives: American volunteers and Oliver Law.
This history belongs to American memory too: workers and activists who understood antifascism as their own cause years before their country entered the Second World War.
Hemingway: reporting the war, preserving their lives
Ernest Hemingway arrived in Spain in 1937 as a correspondent and supported the Republican cause. His journalism and involvement in the documentary The Spanish Earth helped bring the war to an international audience.
His Spanish experience later informed For Whom the Bell Tolls. In the novel, the American Robert Jordan takes part in the Republican struggle alongside a guerrilla group. Through fiction, Hemingway explored commitment, fear, love and sacrifice in a war he had witnessed at close quarters. JFK Library: Hemingway and the Spanish Civil War.
Hemingway was a witness and a writer committed to the Republic. The Brigaders were the people who left their everyday lives to join the fighting. The writer’s fame can bring us closer to them; their stories deserve centre stage.
Picasso and Guernica: another way of taking resistance beyond borders
The struggle for Spain was also fought in newspapers, films, books and works of art.
On 26 April 1937, German and Italian aircraft bombed Gernika in support of Franco’s forces. News of the attack prompted Picasso to paint Guernica for the Spanish Republic’s pavilion at the International Exhibition in Paris. The painting turned the population’s suffering into a denunciation that could travel around the world. Museo Reina Sofía: the bombing and the creation of Guernica.
The Brigades and Picasso’s painting expressed, in different ways, the international dimension of that struggle. Some crossed borders to defend the Republic; the painting carried the denunciation of what was happening across those borders.
At WeTheComuna, Frida Kahlo presents this history in Picasso and Guernica: the politics outside the frame, with the article and video in English.
La Pasionaria’s farewell
In September 1938, Juan Negrín announced the withdrawal of the international fighters as an initiative intended to secure the departure of the foreign forces supporting Franco as well. IBMT: timeline of the withdrawal.
The farewell in Barcelona that October was an outpouring of gratitude and sorrow. La Pasionaria addressed them on behalf of a people who recognised the price of their solidarity. Some could return home; others, persecuted by their own countries’ dictatorships, faced a new exile. IBMT: farewell to the International Brigades.
Many had left comrades buried in Spain. The Republic’s later defeat did not make their decision meaningless. They had helped sustain resistance, saved lives and shown that a border need not mark the limit of solidarity.
A memory that still resonates
Remembering the International Brigades means recovering a political tradition built on organisation, commitment and responsibility towards other peoples.
Their example continues to pose a question: what are we prepared to do when the freedom of others is threatened?