During and after the Spanish Civil War, over 500,000 people left Spain; at least 200,000 would remain outside Spain for many years, some for the rest of their lives. They went to France, Mexico, Argentina, the USSR, and across the globe. These Spanish ‘republican’ refugees were also connected to those who had stayed within Spain, by familial and political ties or the bonds of friendship. In order to investigate this reality – a group of people from all kinds of political, social and economic backgrounds based in so many different geographic locations – this thesis foregrounds the role of the individual in both experiencing and constructing history, being defined and resisting definition from different entities. Consequently, it seeks to intervene in the historiography of the Spanish Civil War and republican exile by highlighting the ways in which individual experiences and narratives both strengthen and weaken categories such as: political, a-political, refugee and exile. This PhD brings together underused source materials stored in Spain and Mexico, as well as digital archives stored online; it is based on archived oral history interviews with refugees, additional oral history interviews undertaken by the author, several collections of letters, unpublished and published memoirs, and official documents. Each chapter considers a different aspect of the refugees’ experiences and how these experiences are represented in the source material: departure, separation and communication, return and home, and the memory of exile within families. How and why did people leave? How did they change their behaviour in order to adapt to or survive particular circumstances? How have the children and grandchildren of Spanish refugees reacted to family narratives and memories? Central to this analysis is the role played by factors such as gender, age, class, status, personality and political views in shaping peoples’ experiences, as well as an emphasis on ‘non-elite’ alongside ‘elite’ refugees’ experiences of displacement. The historiography of the Spanish Civil War and subsequent exile has been shaped by political and ideological debates, as well as the different national contexts refugees found themselves in. From the numbers of refugees recorded as having left Spain, to the idea that returning to Spain was a betrayal, to the memory of the exile within Spain, almost every aspect of the refugees’ experiences has been used to make or refute arguments surrounding the morality of the republican cause and the nature of the Francoist regime. At the same time, the different circumstances of refugees living in countries like France and Mexico meant that different narratives or collective memories regarding the role of refugees in their host countries are still being constructed and reconstructed. One of the central aims of this thesis is to show how these debates have obscured the richness of individual experiences; the thesis therefore argues that considering stories which do not “fit” or details which are difficult to synthesise ultimately leads us to a more profound understanding of history. Driven by an extensive use of a range of oral history interviews, the thesis will also explore how historical time is complicated by personal testimony. The events of one person’s life are carried into the present, as they continue to affect their character, state of mind and attitude to success and hardship. Personal memories and perspectives will provide a contrast to historical narratives which focus on the role of the state, military events, ideology or political parties; instead, the thesis will show how these entities and events affect people’s lives, and the lives of their children. The central argument of this thesis is that Spanish refugees were not ‘preordained’ by the ideological conflicts which were embedded in the Civil War or their displacement. Instead, refugees actively constructed their ‘self-hood’ in response to these circumstances, rather than being (wholly) defined by them.

My dissertation analyzes the Spanish Nobel Laureate poet’s transatlantic path and his relationship to Spain, the United States and Puerto Rico as expressed in his archival practices from 1916 (his first trip to the U.S.) until his death in 1958. Jiménez went into permanent exile in 1936, when he and his wife Zenobia Camprubí fled from the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). During the war and subsequent dictatorship of Francisco Franco, Jiménez would live in Cuba, Coral Gables, Baltimore and Washington before settling in Puerto Rico in 1951. In Madrid, supporters of Franco broke into his residence and ransacked his papers, books and personal items ––his carefully-kept life's work–– which would take many years to recover only partially. Jiménez never returned to Spain. He died in Puerto Rico in 1958, not only writing new poems but rewriting, recreating and “reliving” his poems and prose, labors for which he had always depended upon his personal archive. Before his death, Jiménez destined his Nobel Prize earnings to the institutionalization of his archive (Sala Zenobia-Juan Ramón Jiménez, University of Puerto Rico) and to a museum (Casa-Museo Zenobia/Juan Ramón Jiménez) located in his childhood home in the Andalusian town of Moguer. The dissertation presents Jiménez as a steward of memory across borders and studies how the partial recovery of his papers and the establishment of his Sala in the University of Puerto Rico —one of the very first examples of the acquisition of a major writer’s papers in the U.S. or Puerto Rico— coincides with the formation of a national, cultural narrative and with archival practices heavily dependent upon a shifting national conception of Puerto Rican identity. Jiménez was attempting to reconstruct and preserve his work on an island still struggling to establish national, educational, cultural and archival institutions and to recover from the dispersal of its historical documents throughout Europe and in Washington, D.C. My dissertation examines Jiménez’s archive in the context of Puerto Rico's loss and repossession of its colonial archive and modernization of its own archival practices.

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African Americans have a rich history of activism, but their involvement in affecting change during the interwar period is often overlooked in favor of post-Civil War and post-World War II coverage. African Americans also have a rich history of reaching out to the international community when it comes to that activism. This examination looks to illuminate the effect of the connections African Americans made with the rest of the world and how that shaped their worldview and their activism on the international stage. Through the use of newspapers and first-hand accounts, it becomes clear how African American figures and world incidents shaped what the African American community in the United States took interest in. In Paris, however, musicians explored a world free from Jim Crow, and the Pan-African Congresses created and encouraged a sense of unity among members of the black race around the globe. When violence threatened Ethiopians through the form of an Italian invasion, African Americans chose to speak out, and when they saw the chance at revenge against fascists they joined the Spanish Republic in their fight against Francisco Franco. In the interwar period African Americans took to heart the idea of black unity and chose to act in the interest of the black race on the international stage. Their ideas and beliefs changed over the course of the two decades between the World Wars, eventually turning thoughts into actions and lashing out against any injustice that befell any member of the black race.

This thesis is an exploration of the motives, mentalities and collective identities which lay behind acts of popular anticlerical violence and iconoclasm during the pre-war Spanish Second Republic (1931-1936) and the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The five year period following the proclamation of the democratic Second Republic in April 1931 was marked by physical assaults upon the property and public ritual of the Spanish Catholic Church. These grassroots attacks were generally carried out by rural and urban anticlerical workers who were frustrated by the Republic's practical inability to tackle the Church's vast power. On 17-18 July 1936, a rightwing military rebellion divided Spain geographically, provoking the radical fragmentation of power in territory which remained under Republican authority. The coup marked the beginning of a conflict which developed into a full-scale civil war. Anticlerical protagonists, with the reconfigured structure of political opportunities working in their favour, participated in an unprecedented wave of iconoclasm and violence against the clergy. During the first six months of the conflict, innumerable religious buildings were destroyed and almost 7,000 religious personnel were killed. This thesis challenges standard interpretations which link these acts to irrationality, criminality and primitiveness. It focuses directly upon the agents of anticlerical violence, exploring the connections between the anticlerical outpouring of July 1936 and those forms of anticlericalism that were already emerging before the coup. It argues that Spanish popular anticlericalism was a phenomenon which was undergoing a radical process of reconfiguration during the first three decades of the twentieth century. During a period of rapid social, cultural and political change, anticlerical acts took on new, explicitly political meanings, becoming both a catalyst and a symptom of social change. After 17-18 July 1936, anticlerical violence became an implicitly constructive force for many of its protagonists: an instrument with which to build a new society.

Durante a Guerra Civil Espanhola (1936-1939), operou-se um intenso debate ideológico entre as forças políticas que se confrontavam nos campos de batalha. Canções e cartazes de guerra foram eficientes instrumentos de divulgação das idéias de anarquistas, comunistas e nacionalistas. Tal debate, porém, já se havia anunciado nas duas primeiras décadas do século XX, quando esses grupos políticos veicularam suas ideologias através de textos ficcionais dirigidos às massas. Naquele contexto, o pensamento defendido pelos anarquistas circulou em mais de seiscentas novelas da série Novela Ideal, que visavam sobretudo à conscientização de seus leitores. O núcleo deste trabalho é a análise da ética libertária dessa produção ficcional que se constituiu como outro pólo de interlocução coerente com as demais formas de expressão usadas pelos anarquistas. Apesar da repressão a essa utopia, ela continua mobilizando, em outros lugares e tempos históricos, representações artísticas que atestam a permanência dos ideais ácratas como se observa, por exemplo, no texto O curto verão da anarquia e no filme Terra e Liberdade. / During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) an intense ideological debate was staged among the political forces that confronted each another on the battlefields. War songs and posters served as efficient tools for the disclosure of the ideas of anarchists, communists and nationalists. Said debate, however, had already been announced in the first decades of the 20th century, when these political groups transmitted their ideologies through fictional texts targeting the masses. In that context, the line of thought defended by anarchists circulated in over six hundred titles of the Novela Ideal series, which pursued the awareness of their readers above all. The core of this study is the analysis of the libertarian ethics of this fictional production, which constituted another point of dialogue in line with the other means of expression used by the anarchists. In spite of the repression of this utopia, it continues mobilizing, in other places and historic times, artistic representations that attest to the permanence of anarchists ideas as seen, for example, in the text entitled The short summer of anarchy and in the movie Land and Freedom.

Esta dissertação trata do livro de contos El canto de la juventud (1990), escrito por Montserrat Roig (1946-1991), e busca discutir os possíveis modos como a memória se configura ficcionalmente através da ótica feminina em torno à noção de biblioteca. Na obra delineia-se um passado que remonta ao período do pós-guerra civil espanhola, o que leva à reflexão sobre a conjuntura histórico-social relacionada com a contenda. São destacados aspectos biográficos de Montserrat Roig, bem como relativos à sua produção literária e não ficcional, marcada pela presença da língua catalã e da mulher, com vistas a embasar a leitura das narrativas que, em um primeiro momento, sinaliza para o processo composicional da lembrança e, posteriormente, aprofunda essa ideia. Esta análise está centrada nos contos El canto de la juventud, A salvo de la guerra y de las olas, Madre, no entiendo a los salmones e Antes que merezca el olvido, que propiciam o exame acerca do exercício rememorativo, configurado também pelo esquecimento e pela criação imaginativa do passado. / This dissertation on the short story book El canto de la juventud (1990) by Montserrat Roig (1946-1991) is aimed at discussing how memory is fictionally designed from a feminine perspective based on the notion of library. The past exhibited in the stories traces back to the post-Spanish Civil War years, which leads us to reflect on the circumstances of the conflict. In order to support our study of those narratives, we highlight some biographical aspects of Montserrat Roigs life and provide information on her literary and non-fictional works, imprinted by the Catalan language and the female presence. At first, we point out the compositional process of memories, which we further elaborate. Such analysis focuses on the short stories El canto de la juventud, A salvo de la guerra y de las olas, Madre, no entiendo a los salmones and Antes que merezca el olvido, once they allow us to examine the remembering exercise, also formed by oblivion and the imaginative recreation of the past.

O objetivo desta pesquisa é analisar as relações entre o governo brasileiro e a Guerra Civil Espanhola. A partir da sublevação militar de 17 de julho de 1936, o cenário interno do estado espanhol tornou-se o epicentro do embate entre as forças conservadoras e a diversidade de grupos políticos de esquerda. Desde os seus primeiros momentos, a guerra civil transbordou as fronteiras espanholas e europeias. Se por um lado houve o envolvimento direto e indireto de países europeus, por outro, também houve substancial importância nas Américas. Assim, esta tese pretende desenvolver uma abordagem dos papéis existentes entre os órgãos públicos e privados relacionados ao governo Vargas e os grupos envolvidos na Guerra Civil Espanhola, sobretudo aqueles pertencentes aos militares sob o controle de Francisco Franco. As ações de órgãos como o Ministério de Relações Exteriores e do Departamento Nacional do Café, tiveram papel preponderante em um apoio oficioso aos rebelados, enquanto que as representações diplomáticas da Segunda República foram paulatinamente relegadas a uma situação marginal. / The aim of this research is to analyze the relations between the Brazilian government and the Spanish Civil War. From the military uprising of 1936 July 17th, the domestic scenery of Spanish State became the epicenter of a struggle between conservative forces and the diversity of left political groups. Since its first moments, the civil war crossed the Spanish and European borders. If, on the one hand, there was a direct and indirect involvement of the European countries, on the other hand, there was also a substantial significance in the Americas. Thus, this thesis intends to develop an approach between the roles of public and private organizations of Vargas government and the related groups of the Spanish Civil War, mainly those ones under the General Francisco Francos control. The attitudes of public bodies as the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and National Coffee Department, it had a key role to an unofficial support to the insurgents, meanwhile, the diplomatic representations of Spanish Second Republic were gradually sent to a marginal condition.

Une guerre civile est un conflit violent impliquant un changement socio-politique dramatique qui devient un jalon historique, culturel et littéraire. C’est une période où les processus doubles de la déconstruction et de la reconstruction reformulent les lois, l’histoire et les identités communautaires. Le fait que ces transformations rapides impliquent une souffrance humaine massive est peut-être l’aspect le plus perturbant d’une guerre civile. Cette thèse analyse la façon dont les romans contemporains sur les guerres civiles de l’Espagne et de l’ex-Yougoslavie représentent l’expérience humaine au cours de ces périodes de transformations sociales chaotiques et violentes. A partir d’une étude comparative des œuvres, elle soutient que les romans représentent la condition humaine en se focalisant sur les expériences subjectives des gens ordinaires pendant les conflits, et en reléguant en arrière-plan les évènements politiques et militaires de la guerre civile. / A civil war is a violent conflict of dramatic political and social change that becomes a historical, cultural and literary marker. It is a period when laws, history and identities are reformulated through dual processes of deconstruction and reconstruction. This makes evident the symbolic dimension of civil war violence and accentuates the unstable, precarious and malleable nature of identity constructs, ideologies and history. The fact that these rapid transformations implicate massive human suffering is perhaps what is most unsettling about civil war. A civil war is not only a pivotal moment in a nation’s history but as well on an individual level for those who live through it and have to adapt to the changing systems of values that redefine life during and after the conflict. This thesis examines how contemporary novels dealing with the Spanish Civil War and the Yugoslav conflict reflect on the human experience during these periods of chaotic and violent social transformations. The study presents a comparative analysis of the following works: Camilo José Cela’s San Camilo, 1936, Dževad Karahasan’s Sara i Serafina (Sara and Sefarina), Mercè Rodoreda’s Quanta, quanta guerra… (War, so much war), Velibor Čolić’s Chronique des oubliés (Chronicle of the forgotten), Carmen Martín Gaite’s El cuarto de atrás (The backroom), David Albahari’s Mrak (Darkness), and Javier Cercas’ Soldados de Salmanina (Soldiers of Salamis). Parting from a close study of the texts, the thesis argues that the novels represent the human dimension by focusing on ordinary people’s subjective experiences during the conflict while relegating the political and military events surrounding the civil war to the background. Such representations aspire to redeem the complexities and the significance of individual lives and of a social collective, which the civil war’s physical and symbolic violence dehumanizes, silences and obliterates.

Esta dissertação analisa seis poemas de duas das obras mais importantes do poeta Blas de Otero, Ángel fieramente humano (1949) e Redoble de conciencia (1950), com o objetivo de fornecer uma interpretação que busque unir três elementos fundamentais para o entendimento de sua poética: sua biografia, o contexto histórico do Pós-Guerra Civil Espanhola e os elementos existencialistas que se conformam em seus sonetos. O trabalho entrelaça, portanto, a conjuntura histórico-social dos anos de 1940, ou seja, o período imediato após o término da Guerra Civil e o estabelecimento da ditadura franquista, com os rumos pessoais do poeta basco Blas de Otero que gerará, em 1949 e 1950, as duas obras consideradas parte de sua fase existencialista. A partir dessas perspectivas, o debate proposto visa propiciar uma nova visão que possa unir o social com o existencial, o histórico com o poético, o individual com o universal, integrando assim as diferentes percepções da crítica da obra do poeta em uma interpretação orgânica para o que denominamos de poética da insuficiência de Blas de Otero. / This dissertation analyzes six poems of two of the most important works of the poet Blas de Otero, Ángel fieramente humano (1949) and Redoble de conciencia (1950), with the aim of providing an interpretation that seeks to unite three fundamental elements for the understanding of his poetics: his biography, the historical context of the Spanish Civil War and the existentialist elements that conform to his sonnets. The work thus interweaves the historical-social conjuncture of the 1940s, that is, the immediate period after the end of the Civil War and the establishment of the Franco dictatorship, with the personal directions of the Basque poet Blas de Otero, which will generate, in 1949 and 1950, the two works considered part of their existentialist phase. From these perspectives, the proposed debate aims to provide a new vision that can integrate the social with the existential, the historical with the poetic, the individual with the universal, integrating the different perceptions of the critique of the poet\'s work in an organic interpretation for what we call the poetics of Blas de Otero\'s insufficiency.