Translating for the Legions of Babel: Spain 1936–1938.

Abstract

The International Brigades were a multinational armed force of 35,000 soldiers who, from late summer 1936, fought on the Loyalist side in the Spanish Civil War. They were mobilized from more than fifty different countries to support the Republican militia, assembled by unions and political parties to resist the military insurrection organized under General Franco, which very soon relied on the financial support of Mussolini and Hitler. Although the Loyalist Generals Vicente Rojo (2010: 471) and Enrique Líster (1977: 318) claim that the relevance of the Brigades to the outcome of a number of battles was exaggerated by propaganda, the Internationals filled, to various extents, the gap left by insurrectionists in the professional Spanish army until the Republic could rearticulate its own forces.