Nick Lloyd

You made it a very memorable trip Dusty

Militiamen, probably anarchist Ascaso Division, resting at Banastás, part of siege of Huesca, by great Hungarian photographer Kati Horna, March1937, one of series of brilliant images she took around the village. Orwell was stationed a few kilometres away on other side of Huesca which was never taken

Likely anti Trump, even among quite a lot of rightwing voters

No a la guerra. Million-strong demonstrations in 2003 in Barcelona and Madrid against the Iraq War

Sánchez on the World Stage

Why has Pedro Sánchez been willing to reject US-Israeli aggression against Iran?

@becquer.bsky.social & @eoghangilmartin.bsky.social
discuss the domestic factors informing his foreign policy & Sánchez's vision for Spain and the EU's place in the new world order: open.spotify.com/episode/7lRT...

Thanks Andrew

Tearful farewell of father and son as family members board ship in A Coruña harbour bound for Buenas Aires in Nov 1957. Iconic shot by Manuel Ferrol encapsulating the trauma of Galician emigration forced by economic hardship +by extension similar worldwide. Don't know colouriser.

Francisco Franco, in addition to ordering slaughter of humans and shooting game animals, also enjoyed killing a couple of whales a year. Had a harpoon fitted to his yacht Azor. He'd dump 'em on Galician fishing village quays demanding payment from municipality for oil they'd extract

Such a great song!

The hope for a new Spain with the defeat of Franco.
"The instinct for life, stronger than death and destruction, beating in this scence. Motherhood under the Sign of the Revolution,"
Anarchist magazine Umbral, 2 October 1937
The tragedy/trauma of what Franco's victory meant for the women who lost.

The Irish poet Charlie" Donnelly was killed yesterday 88 years ago on 27 February 1937 by a Francoist bullet at the battle of Jarama. A few minutes before, after a lull in the fierce fighting, he was heard uttering his last and now immortal lines "Even the olives are bleeding".

Mimicry. Moorish gecko. Poble-sec, Barcelona

I had lunch with my good friend Alan just before

Whoops, El Ejército del Ebro...

Marvelous version of ¡Ay Carmela! (El Ejercicio del Ebro) performed by The Song and Dance Ensemble of the Moscow Palace of Pioneers, USSR, 1968.

Thanks Katherine, nice moving little snapshot of a moment

Casa Almirall, one of the few old authentic bars left in the Raval. Future Trotsky assassin Ramón Mercader was arrested here in 1935 as part of clamp down on the left in Barcelona. Ken Loach used the bar to film scene in Land and Freedom.

Spain 1939. "Speak the national language" "Speak Christian. Don't speak like a dog". Part of widespread repression of the public use of Catalan, Basque and Galician by the Franco regime. Can't remember where I found it but looks like a screenshot from a Francoist NODO newsreel

Hallgrímur Hallgrímsson, one of 5? Icelandic International Brigaders to fight in Spain. 1933 he gained fame after climbing on board Nazi ship moored in Reykjavík, taking swastika flag, which he then trampled at a meeting. Died when trawler sank off Iceland coast 1942 poss when hit Nazi mine.

Absolutely!

Artist  Sophie Killingley came on the tour today and did these wonderful live sketches. Amazing to see her work as I told the story of Barcelona in the Spanish Civil War. @sophiekillingley on Instagram

Columbus monument at the bottom of the Rambla as funeral march of anarchist leader Buenaventura Durruti passes by, the largest Barcelona has even seen, on 23 November, 1936. One of trove of photos taken by Antoni Campañà discovered in 2018.

Clive Branson's "Demonstration In Battersea", London, 1939 with Spanish Republican flag in background. Branson fought in Spain with the British Batallion but was captured and imprisoned at the terrible Francoist San Pedro de Cardeña camp. Later killed in action in 1944 in Burma

Such a great film too

Film director Carlos Saura's empathetic lens on the poverty striken Spain of the early 1950s. Perhaps many of these people had moved to the cities within a decade. Many on today's Spanish right seem nostalgic for the social relations, deference and power structure which governed those years.

From 1950 photo report by Eugene Smith for Life entitled "Spanish Village", in fact Deleitosa, Extremadura. Franco's war& dictatorship cleaved society into winners and losers and set economic progress back decades, except for the fortunes of the those who won in 1939...
www.life.com/people/life-...

That's right

Interesting. Agró roig is the official name for the purple heron

I don't know why, similar reason I guess to those you list plus of course Robin Redbreast? A stinkbug in Catalan by the way is called a Bernat pudent ...

We watched this grey heron (Spanish "garza real"; Catalan "bernat pescaire") having a good old preen in the trees above Barcelona zoo. More than 100 wild pairs breed in the zoo every year, the largest urban heronry in Europe, along with dozens of egrets.