Sitting on a grass verge in Madrid’s University City is a simple concrete monument, decorated with a red three-pointed star and the inscription:

Sois las historia, sois la leyenda
sois el ejemplo heroica de la solidaridad
y de la universalidad de la democracia

The memorial commemorates the creation seventy-five years earlier of the International Brigades, the volunteers from around the world who came to the help of the democratic Spanish Republican government, following the military coup launched by Franco and his friends in July 1936. The inscription bears the words of Dolores Ibarruri, La Pasionaria, the Communist deputy for the Asturias, part of a passionate, eloquent speech expressing Spain’s eternal gratitude as she bid farewell to the surviving members of the Brigades, six months before the Republic finally fell in March 1939.

The memorial’s location, in Madrid’s University City, was the site of bitter fighting in November and December 1936, when Franco’s forces were at the gates of the Spanish capital. The Rebel Generals met with defiant resistance by the population of Madrid who, with the help of the foreign volunteers of the International Brigades, beat back the elite forces of Franco’s army. But at considerable cost- many antifascist volunteers from Germany, Italy, Poland, France and elsewhere around the world – Britain included- were killed in the frantic fighting.

The project to place the memorial was the initiative of AABI, the Asociación de Amigos de las Brigadas Internacionales, the Madrid-based International Brigades friendship group. Designed by teachers and students at the university’s faculty of fine arts, the memorial received the backing of the university authorities and seven embassies provided financial assistance: Argentina, Canada, Cyprus, Norway, Russia, Serbia and Slovenia. A number of other countries were officially represented at the unveiling, including China, France, Ireland, Sweden and Venezuela – along with Spain itself. Britain’s International Brigade Memorial Trust donated €500 towards the cost of the memorial, in memory of the 2500 volunteers who left for Spain from Britain, of whom 527 never returned.

Present at the unveiling on 22 October 2011 was the last surviving UK based veteran of the brigades, ninety-four year old Londoner David Lomon, who gave a stirring, impromptu speech:

It is a great honour to be here today to join with you in memory of all the young men and women who came to Spain to join your fight against fascism. We must always remember those who gave their lives and also the suffering of the Spanish people.

The ideals of the international volunteers will never be forgotten.

Even though we lost the so-called civil war, the democratic powers realised that fascism must be stopped, or they too would suffer the same fate. The Second World War was a continuation of the war in Spain.

Seventy-five years ago this month, the International Brigades were formed to fight against Franco, Mussolini and Hitler. Even today ‘No pasarán’ lives on.

I would like to thank all those who have made this wonderful memorial. It will serve to remind the world of the future that a great price was paid to enable our ideals to live on. Salud!

But even before the monument’s inauguration, the project met with resistance. An unsuccessful legal bid to stop the monument being unveiled was launched by an individual linked to the Falangists, which the rector of Madrid’s university, José Carrillo Menéndez, described as ‘reminiscent of the Franco regime’. And within days of its unveiling, it was daubed with red paint and asesinos sprayed across it. And now a case brought by the lawyer Miguel García has succeeded where political protest failed.’ On 3 June 2013 the Tribunal Superior de Justicia, decided that the memorial should be removed on the grounds that it had been erected by the university without planning permission, even though the university insisted that it had applied for permission, but did not receive a reply from the city council.

Supporters of the monument are rallying to its defence. They point out that, although the ruling was made on technical grounds, the original complaint was lodged by a lawyer with known far-right connections. They also point out that Franco’s victory arch still stands at the entrance to the University City and that other much larger memorials – such as that to the victims of the 2004 train bombings – were erected without the required permits.

An online petition has been launched by the AABI on Change.org and there has been huge interest on social media sites and articles have appeared in the British press, by The Guardian’s Giles Tremlett and others. Now, Islington Labour M.P. Jeremy Corbyn has signed an early-day motion in the House of Commons calling for ‘the Government to make representations to the Spanish government to ensure that the memorial remains in place, so that future generations may be reminded of some of the more important moments in their history.’

Whether, in the present political climate, the protests will make any difference remains to be seen. And it’s not just in Spain: a memorial plaque in Nottingham was taken down by Conservative Council leader and plans to reinstate it were bizarrely described by Councillor Kay Cutts as likely to be offensive to the family of murdered soldier Lee Rigby. Across Europe antifascist fighters have been attacked, while fascist collaborators have been politically rehabilitated. Official commemorations are held for Baltic volunteer units of the Waffen-SS and other pro-Nazi groups. As a blogpost in Left Futures argued:

This rewriting of history across Europe – smearing antifascists and rehabilitating nazi collaborators – must be combatted. It absolves the far right and gives them respectability – at a time when austerity has prompted fascists to step up their agressive actions as was seen this week with the brutal murder of left wing activist Clément Méric by fascist thugs  in Paris and violent EDL attacks on Mosques, giving them electoral gains as was seen with Marine Le Pen in France, the Golden Dawn in Greece and Jobbik in Hungary.

Please sign the online petition to save the International Brigades memorial in Madrid’s University City.

Postscipt: Matthew Kerry, a PhD student at the University of Sheffield, has just written an interesting bloigpost on the removal of the monument. More here >