While the story of the International Brigades’ involvement in the defence of Madrid in 1936-1937 is well known, their involvement in bitter fighting in southern Spain during the winter of 1936 and the spring of 1937 is less well documented.

Determined efforts to correct this oversight were made during two days of events in April 2016, when the sacrifices of the International Brigades on behalf of the Spanish Republic were remembered in several Andalucian villages, just east of Cordóba. The homanajes – well-attended and supported by local politicians – saw the unveiling of several new plaques commemorating the Spanish Republic’s fight against fascism.

Friday 8 April saw events held in three separate villages: La Granjuela, Belalcázar and Valsequillo. In front of friends and family members from Spain, Britain, France, Ireland and the United States, the mayors of the villages unveiled memorials and expressed their gratitude for the volunteers’ efforts and sacrifices all those years ago. At the final event in Valsequillo, local dignitaries were joined by Rosa Aguilar, Andalucia’s Minister for Culture, who spoke movingly on the importance of the recuperation of historical memory. As the local media reported, attempts by a local fascist to interrupt the event by blasting Franco’s anthem, Caro al Sol, out of an open window were rather drowned out by the music, singing and laughter of the numerous Republican supporters.

Saturday’s events began with a commemoration in front of the railway station at Andújar, where Internationals – many of them veterans of the fighting in Madrid – had disembarked in December 1936, following their posting to the southern front. From here the volunteers advanced to the front, near the village of Lopera, scene of the subsequent commemoration. Here, a local historian described – in eloquent and moving detail – the terrible events of the battle of Lopera on 28 December 1936. Outgunned and unprotected from aerial bombardment, Republican attempts to assault the high ground held by experienced Franco’s Moroccan soldiers were doomed to failure. During the vicious fighting many, many volunteers lost their lives, including the popular and respected Marxist scholar, Ralph Fox, and the Cambridge intellectual, poet and political activist, John Cornford.

In the village of Lopera itself a memorial to Fox and Cornford has been erected. Here relatives gathered to remember them, hearing accounts of volunteers’ reasons for joining the fight for democracy in Spain, together with a moving recital of one of John Cornford’s poems by the daughter of an Irish volunteer.

The final event of the two-day homanaje was the unveiling of a plaque in the centre of Lopera. The village’s mayor  earned widespread applause for her declaration that the commemoration marked only the beginning of a series of events to commemorate the democratic government’s fight against Franco and his allies, Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. It looks likely that these will include an international conference in November 2106 to mark the 80th anniversary of the arrival of the International Brigades. Watch this space.

My thanks to all of those involved in organising the two day’s events, particularly AABI’s Almudena Cros and Seve Montero and the IBMT’s Pauline Fraser. It was, I think (and by all accounts), a resounding success.