SPANISH CIVIL WAR NEWSPAPERS. The volunteer for liberty: organ of the international brigades. Madrid: [War Commissariat of the International Brigades], July 12 1937-November 7 1938.

14 very rare issues of this weekly newspaper printed for the English-speaking Republican fighters of the International Brigades.

Comprising 14 issues thus: Vol. 1, Nos. 7, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 27 and 28, and Vol. II, Nos. 3, 4, 6, 30, 33, and 35, folio (approx. 340 x 240 mm.). (A few short marginal tears, occasional light staining.)

SCARCE SURVIVALS OF THIS IMPORTANT SPANISH CIVIL WAR PERIODICAL. The International Brigades was a collective term for the groups of foreign fighters who joined the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. Numbering approximately 60,000 members over the course of the war, with around 2,500 from Britain and Ireland, the brigades saw action at the siege of Madrid and the battles of Jarama and Guadalajara, with as many as 25,000 losing their lives.

The volunteer for liberty was founded in 1937 and its weekly issues aimed to encourage and unite the English speaking battalions and to condemn Franco and the Nationalists, as well as the wider growth of fascism in Europe under Hitler and Mussolini. Edited by Englishman Ralph Bates, a communist writer and a significant commentator on the war effort, the newspaper ran stories on the heroics of the British fighters, criticism of nationalist failings, and articles reassuring readers of the popular worldwide support for the Republican cause.

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