This is it! This is the most interesting event of the Summer Quarter at Cal State L.A., so please try to make it. THIS WEEK, Wednesday August 8th, will be our remembrance of the Spanish Civil War, in the third-floor Golden Eagle ballroom, 6-8 p.m. Professor Maria Dolores Costa will give a presentation on "Silence, Memory and the Spanish Civil War," followed by the music of Hector Marques and the Xochisoneros (including authentic Spanish Civil War songs).

Cal State L.A. is located at the intersection of the 10 and 710 freeways. The Golden Eagle Building is in the middle of the campus, on the main walkway opposite JFK Memorial Library. Paid parking is available at the north end of campus (enter on Mariondale from Valley Boulevard, or drive north around campus on Paseo Rancho Castilla from Eastern).

(The following is not necessarily in accord with Professor Costa's views:)

In the 1930's, the Spanish Civil War was a cause celebre for young progressives and leftists from around the world. Volunteers came from Britain, France, Italy, Mexico, Russia and the United States (the famous "Abraham Lincoln Brigade") to defend the fragile Republic against Franco's Fascist army. Even German refugees from Hitler's regime came to fight for the working class! Anarchist and socialist collectives were set up in many cities including Barcelona, a phenomenon not seen since the Paris Commune of 1871, and probably not seen since -- this was the "last gasp" of anarchism as a powerful, organized movement. George Orwell commented on how rare it was to see a society where the working class was firmly in charge.

Ultimately, of course, the Fascists won and Spain was plunged into four decades of reactionary conservative Catholicism. Spain was widely viewed as a preliminary battleground for World War II, and Hitler and Mussolini proved it by launching aerial terror-bombings against civilian areas, a new tactic which inspired Picasso's "Guernica." Like their left-wing counterparts, Fascist partisans also came from all over the world to help Franco. After Franco's victory, nonconformity and alternative lifestyles and views were so firmly stamped out that, on Franco's death, Spain experienced all the social movements of the past 40 years at one time, from beats to hippies to punks. Franco, of course, did not participate in World War II, allowing him to be the only European Fascist dictator to survive until the Seventies. Fortunately, many other veterans of the Spanish Civil War survived even longer, including veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who went on to resist U.S. imperialism in Nicaragua.

See you there!

Tom & Ron

(323) 876-1767