ABSTRACT This paper analyses the anti-partisan war waged by the rebel forces during the Spanish Civil War and later by Franco’s dictatorship between 1936 and 1952. It argues that Spain constituted the earliest and longest-lasting case of anti-fascist armed resistance in twentieth-century Europe and, correspondingly, one of the first sites of modern counterinsurgency conducted by a fascist regime. Drawing on military orders, judicial records and internal security documentation, the article examines the main pillars of Francoist counterinsurgency, including the refusal to take prisoners, indiscriminate reprisals against civilian populations, hostage-taking, forced evacuations, deportation to concentration camps and the deliberate destruction of forests. By comparing the Spanish case with the anti-partisan wars waged by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and other Axis or collaborationist regimes during the Second World War, the article challenges interpretations of Spanish exceptionalism and instead places the Francoist experience within a shared European repertoire of counterinsurgency.

Grief and Trauma Structures Among Relatives of Spanish Civil War Victims: A Network Analysis Approach

This article examines the early conscientious objection to military service by Jehovah's Witnesses in Spain during the Civil War (1936–9) and the first two decades of Franco's dictatorship (1939–59). While previous scholarship has primarily focused on secular and political forms of objection arising in the 1970s, this study foregrounds an earlier, religiously motivated resistance that has remained largely undocumented. Drawing on military records, oral testimonies, and denominational religious publications, the article reconstructs the moral reasoning, legal consequences, and lived experiences of ten Jehovah's Witness objectors. It identifies two key phases: isolated wartime refusals under conditions of extreme repression, including the execution of one objector, and a renewed pattern of objection in the 1950s, marked by imprisonment, psychiatric diagnoses and chained sentencing. The analysis is further situated within a comparative international perspective, contrasting the Spanish case with other national experiences in both democratic and authoritarian contexts. The findings demonstrate that religious conscience played a significant role in shaping early conscientious objection and non-violent dissent in Spain. The study contributes to the historiography of civil resistance, religious persecution and human rights under authoritarian regimes, calling for broader integration of religious actors into the analysis of pacifist movements in twentieth-century Europe.

This paper explores the contributions of Carmen Aldecoa, scientist and professor of Natural History, whose professional trajectory took shape in Madrid and Santander during the 1920s and 1930s. Firmly aligned with republican values, she voiced her political stance at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, in the newspapers El Diario Montañés and España Libre (New York/Toulouse). Forced to flee Spain, she settled in the United States in 1940 where she taught Spanish at New York University. Her articles, essays and lectures were compiled into the book, Del sentir y pensar (1957). This article analyses part of that legacy.

Since its emergence in 1833, the Spanish Carlist movement has been widely represented in world culture. In the present article, a number of Russian texts written between 1833 and 1939 that deal with the Carlist theme are analyzed. The lowest time boundary marks the start of the First Carlist War; the upper boundary, the end of the Spanish Civil War and the beginning of the Francoist dictatorship. The paper opens with a short overview of Spanish Carlism history highlights and a brief look at some European literary works that touch upon the theme. The article seeks to trace how Russian men of letters from world-famous fiction classics, such as Gogol or Dostoevsky, to non-fiction writers less known outside Russia, including travel-writers (Botkin, Aivazovsky, Podolinski, Kapustin, Vyrubov), political journalists (Nemirovich-Danchenko), and memoirists (Yaremchuk; Shinkarenko) reflected upon the Carlist movement in their works. Different models of creating the image of Spanish Carlism in Russian literature are shown. We propose a hypothesis that the Carlist movement should have exerted considerable influence on Russian literature and shaped the image of Spain in Russian public opinion in 1833–1939. We have come to the conclusion that the view of Carlism among Russian men of letters was uneven throughout its history.

Purpose This paper examines how women are represented in a purposive sample of war documentaries on the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Syrian War, gauging the persistence and evolution of gender stereotypes across these historical contexts. Design/methodology/approach A mixed-methods content analysis was conducted on 18 documentaries produced between 1963 and 2023. Their transcribed scripts (approximately 154,000 words) were coded and analyzed to identify dominant archetypes and narrative framing, as well as the influence of the director's gender on the representation of women. Findings The analysis shows that women in these documentaries are still most often portrayed through caregiving and victim/vulnerable roles, especially in older and male-directed films. Over time, there is an apparent increase in empowered portrayals of women as combatants, leaders, and activists, particularly in more recent works and those directed by women. Female-directed documentaries give women greater visibility and narrative voice than male-directed ones, indicating that sociohistorical context and directorial gender can support a shift away from patriarchal patterns toward more agentic and diverse images of women in conflict. However, this does not mean that recent productions or female directors automatically produce more representative films, as other factors such as social progress, production context, market pressures, funding structures, and editorial choices may also influence how women are portrayed. Originality/value The study contributes to feminist media research by illustrating that documentary cinema can reproduce patriarchal narratives while also offering potential spaces for progress, depending partially on the directorial perspective and context. It highlights the impact of the sociohistorical context in shaping collective memory and gender representation in films.

ABSTRACT This article addresses the subjective construction of the masculine provider in Andalusian boys after the Spanish Civil War (1939-59). Drawing on a collection of oral testimonies, the text examines how boys and young men came to be considered breadwinners during the early stages of their lives. The analysis of the interviewees’ accounts identified four key points in their life stories: the consideration of their families in terms of an unequal support system; the construction of temporality marked by the rhythms and requirements of work; the existence of a ‘body memory’ of the work; and the symbolization of family relationships that fosters a self-perception as workers who can fend for themselves, while devaluing the work done by others according to their age and gender. The conclusions demonstrate the importance of overcoming in this and other historical contexts the false ‘provider/provided for’ dichotomy when shaping masculinities, in both their relationships with themselves and with others.

Abstract This article examines the conceptual vocabulary through which violence against women during the Spanish Civil War has been interpreted, with particular attention to the longstanding predominance of the category ‘sexed violence’ ( violencia sexuada ). While this terminology played an important role in early efforts to highlight the gendered nature of violence and the symbolic targeting of women's bodies, it also introduced conceptual ambiguities that continue to inform historiographical debates. Drawing on contemporary feminist theory and international scholarship on wartime sexual and gendered violence, the discussion reassesses the analytical usefulness of the sexed framework and identifies its limitations, particularly its tendency to obscure the structural dynamics of gendered inequality. By situating the Spanish case within broader theoretical currents, this article argues that a shift toward the terminology of sexualized violence ( violencia sexualizada ) offers greater analytical precision and better captures the performative, symbolic and systemic logics that shaped female aggression during the Spanish Civil War.

Abstract This article offers a detailed analysis of Winston Churchill's relationship with Spain over the course of his long and eventful political and personal life. The article focuses on three key episodes: Churchill's ambivalent stance during the Spanish Civil War; his leadership and policy towards Spain during the crucial years of the Second World War; and the memory and legacy of Churchill in Spain, particularly in relation to his wartime role. The article argues that Churchill's engagement with Spain reveals a recurring tension between a quixotic impulse – rooted in his aristocratic and monarchist sensibilities, and in a sentimental view of Spanish history – and a more pragmatic, Sancho Panza‐like realism, which became especially prominent during the Second World War.

This article examines the role of the German Secret Field Police (GFP) during the Spanish Civil War. Deployed prior to the arrival of the Condor Legion, the GFP's primary mission was to protect German military forces and Germany itself from any potential leaks of information that could jeopardise its strategic interests. Throughout the course of the war, the GFP underwent significant restructuring and initiated a process of collaboration with Spanish units. This article provides an account of the GFP's structural evolution during the war in Spain, assesses its operational performance, and analyses the results of police collaboration between Spain and Germany.

Microscopic characterisation of dental fractures caused by firearm projectiles.

The Communist Party of Spain (Partido Comunista de España, PCE) and the Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, KPD) had historically been united through their membership of the Communist International and their shared experiences in the Spanish Civil War. After the establishment of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) - the East German successor of the KPD - developed extensive solidarity with the PCE, which the PCE reciprocated with the limited resources at its disposal. Until the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, this solidarity appeared to be unbreakable. From that year on, cooperation became much more difficult. The article explores the evolution of SED-PCE ties and their mutual solidarity within the context of the development of Spain GDR relations and their respective internal objectives. It examines how, up until 1968, the PCE's position on relations between Madrid and the socialist countries influenced the East German attitude towards Spain. From that year onwards, the article reflects on the change in the SED's attitude towards Spain, driven by the division over the Czechoslovakia issue, and the role that the PCE played in the new framework of Spain-GDR relations that was defined from then on.

The following study deals with the life of Rudolf John (1912–2000) from Šumperk in northern Moravia. A graduate of the School for Aviation Cadets, he had served as the Czechoslovak Army Air Force’s NCO until he was forced to quit in 1935. In January 1937, the Spanish Civil War saw John volunteering in the Dimitrov infantry battalion, where he got seriously wounded. He returned, newly wed to a Spanish wife, to Czechoslovakia in the autumn of 1938. He spent the following wartime years in Šumperk engaged in the resistance until he was arrested by the Gestapo in March 1944 and subsequently jailed in Troppau, Theresienstadt and Dresden. After the country’s liberation, John resumed his family life in Šumperk, worked as a cinema manager and used his experience in aviation to help establish a local flying club.

The interest of human beings in artistic creation, and its preservation, has been a constant throughout history. Thanks to this, today we can enjoy works from various moments and origins. However, not all works have been so fortunate, and many have disappeared for various reasons. To mitigate this loss, the virtual recreation of lost works of art is an open topic of interest for the computer graphics and cultural heritage communities. In the literature, we can find works along this line that are based on manual modeling or the use of numerous modern photographs. In this interdisciplinary work, however, we present a new methodology for reconstructing destroyed altarpieces for which only a single historical image is preserved, leveraging modern techniques of differentiable rendering. Additionally, we test our methodology in the reconstruction of the altarpiece of Sant Joan Baptista (Valls, Spain) destroyed during the Spanish Civil War. Our approach results in the partial 3D reconstruction of the main reliefs of the altarpiece. These results are truly useful, both for experts and for the public, as they allow for a better understanding of its volumetrics and its relationship with space, representing an important step forward in the virtual recovery of lost artifacts.

This article examines the efforts of the Australians in Spain Memorial Appeal Committee (ASMAC) to memorialise Australian volunteers who served in the Spanish Civil War.Seventy Australians participated in the defence of the democratic Second Spanish Republic against General Francisco Franco's fascist rebellion.As the volunteers were not official Australian forces, the Australian War Memorials Act of 1980 prohibits official acknowledgement of their service.In June 1992, historian Amirah

In the early morning of October 27, 1937, when the Spanish civil war had already concluded in Astu-rias with the victory of the coup side, members of a battalion of the Francoist army shot eleven women and six men employed in the Republican psychiatric hospital that had been temporarily installed in the convent of Valdediós. The majority were nurses who had moved with a few dozen patients from the Oviedo Provincial Psychiatric Hos-pital, that was evacuated a year earlier. The paper presents the circumstances in which the crime took place, documents the arduous journey that allowed the excavation of the grave and the reco-very and identification of the victims, and reviews the questions and conjectures that exist about those ultimately responsible for the massacre.

Archaeological traces of warfare are often complex heritage, with traumatic historical events generating contested political narratives even decades later, or longer. In the context of the Spanish Civil War, the fortified line known as Bilbao’s Iron Belt embodies tensions between different narratives of the war as it affected the Basque Country. These tensions are sometimes materialised through acts of vandalism – graffiti, destruction or deliberate neglect – which counterpose the official narrative with alternative interpretations. This article explores vandalism affecting the heritage of the iconic Iron Belt through a focus on three sectors of the defensive line. Our research shows that vandalism of the Iron Belt is a widespread phenomenon and that, in some cases, it has been a chronic problem. Moreover, in instances where vandalism is clearly ideological, as in the case of political graffiti, such acts are directly related to socio-cultural context. Beyond the intention of such (re)actions to transform archaeological heritage and present alternative political narratives, we wonder if they also seek to promote a process of damnatio memoriae. We also raise the question of whether such graffiti may also be worth preserving as symbols of present-day heritage-related activities.

This essay discusses three cookbooks by women exiled in Mexico after the Spanish Civil War. It focuses on the life stories they told through their recipes. It argues that they used cooking to heal from the trauma of being forced away and to communicate their resistance to Francisco Franco’s regime.

This essay introduces the Cluster, “Spaniards across the Americas after the Spanish Civil War: ‘Soy del país del exilio’: I am from the country called Exile,” in light of the soon approaching 90th anniversary of this tragic event.

This essay examines Luisa Carnés’s life writing practices during her forced exile in France and Mexico as a consequence of the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship. As her writings map Carnés’s cartographies of the self, Carnés voices her experiences of exile and those of other exiled Spaniards, and the duality of her narrative subject, which establishes her new identity as a Mexican citizen wrapped in an existential nostalgia for her city of birth, Madrid.