News and Blog

Benjamin Britten’s requiem for fallen International Brigaders will be heard on 9 August at this year’s BBC Proms festival of orchestral music.

‘Ballad of Heroes’ will be performed by the BBC National Orchestra and the Chorus of Wales in a programme that also includes works by Brian Ellias and Elgar.

The following message was received on 18 May from our Polish friends in Inicjatywa Łapy precz od ulicy Dąbrowszczaków (Hands off Dabrowszczacy Street Initiative).

Dąbrowski Brigade street in Warsaw, named after Polish volunteers from the International Brigades, stays!

Sculptor and IBMT member Frank Casey writes to say that he is hopeful of raising enough money for four full-scale casts to be made of relief panels portraits of volunteers John Cornford (1915-1936) and Bob Smillie (1917-1937). 

May this year marks the 80th anniversary of the ‘Barcelona May Days’ when dissident anarchist forces and those of the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista) clashed with the communist and socialist-backed Spanish Republican authorities on the streets of the Catalan capital. A memoir of the event takes up much of George Orwell’s ‘Homage to Catalonia’, which in turn inspired the Ken Loach film ‘Land and Freedom’.