Preliminary Programme

Anarchists formed the largest group of Spanish supporters of the Republic who went into exile at the end of the Spanish Civil War. Many were physically and psychologically unable to continue the fight in any form. But by the 1960s, some anarchists such as Felix Carrasquer and Sara Berenguer were pursuing new forms of cooperation and alliances in their attempts to find a path to restoration of democracy in Spain. Carrasquer’s negotiations with a disaffected Francoist official led to inner-party debates and disagreements. This talk is based on archival research at the Salvador Segui Archive in Madrid. It will form part of a much larger project on the political culture of Spanish exiles. I hope that this project will make a contribution to our understanding of the long-term roots of the restoration of democracy in Spain, the political and cultural role of political exiles, and the political culture of the Left (anarchism/left libertarianism in the case of this talk). (Show less)

Although after 1945 the centre of the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) was in Paris, the connections with Eastern Europe were also important. Dolores Ibárruri, long-time general secretary of the party, lived in Moscow and in Bucharest. Prague was central for some of the most important cadres of the Spanish communists -such as Manuel Azcárate, Antonio Cordón, Enrique Líster, Juan Modesto, José Moix and the Pàmies family. In Prague was the redaction of the Spanish edition of the Cominform journal “Problemas de la Paz y el Socialismo”, as well as the Catalan and Spanish broadcasting of the Czechoslovakian national radio. Also, the dispersed groups of émigrés around the whole Eastern Bloc played an important role in the political life of the party, supporting the underground activities and connecting communist ruling parties with the transnational activism of the PCE. All of these contacts –and some other connections- crystalized in a kind of entanglement to Eastern Europe of the Spanish communist elites, who were deeply immersed in the debates of these countries – and took inspiration from them in their own political debates and their practical actions in the times of the Spanish transition. (Show less)

When Fernando de los Ríos and Alfredo Mendizábal projected their academic careers and political commitments in the Spain of the 1920s, they surely did not imagine that their lives would end up in exile. Both, once the civil war showed in its end and the Franco dictatorship was already as cruel as it ended up being, they started an exile in the United States, which led them to work in the famous and European New School for Social Research. This paper explores the forms and dimensions of their work there, their concerns about Europe and the projects in which they got involved to understand and strive politically and scientifically for what Spain and Europe wanted. (Show less)