Fighting Women: Interviews with veterans of the Spanish Civil War

Isabella Lorusso author of Fighting Women: Interviews with veterans of the Spanish Civil War will be speaking about her collection of interviews from the 1990s with women veterans of the fight against fascism in Spain in the 1930s.

Fighting women is a choral book, a set of interviews conducted with Spanish women who took part in the civil war. Some took up arms and fought on the front, others joined the POUM, Free Women or different anarchist groups. They all fought against Francoism and for the emancipation of women, and together they achieved social advances as significant as free abortion. They undertook a whole revolution, and to do so they not only had to face fascism, but also, sometimes, their own comrades.

These overwhelming memories invite us to reflect on a struggle that belongs to another time and that, however, is still revealed today as current and necessary. Their voices, which possess the strength and immediacy of direct testimony, openly present the complexity of an era whose contradictions almost never surface in official historiographic discourse. Poignant memories shed new light on such crucial events as the May Days of 1937 or the murder of Andreu Nin, and delve into the origins of the feminist movement in Spain. Thanks to the work of Isabella Lorusso, this extraordinary message of rebellion and justice is protected from the voracity of oblivion and is revived for new generations of women in struggle.