La Pasionaria and the International Brigades

Dolores Ibárruri ‘was not an opera singer, although her speeches were, by contemporary accounts, undoubtedly dramatic performances,’ writes Charlie Nurse. Photograph: Gamma-Keystone via Getty

I enjoyed your review of Giles Tremlett’s latest book on the International Brigades (3 October) and look forward to reading it. However, probably in common with other readers, I was mystified by the review’s reference to Dolores Ibárruri – without doubt the most famous figure in the Spanish Communist party during the civil war – as an opera singer. Ibárruri, known as La Pasionaria, was not an opera singer, although her speeches were, by contemporary accounts, undoubtedly dramatic performances.

It is also somewhat misleading to cite Orwell, Hemingway, Spender and Auden as examples of artists who were drawn to the International Brigades. They were, it is true, supporters of the Spanish Republic, but that is a different matter. None of them joined the brigades, though Spender declined an invitation from the British Communist party leader, Harry Pollitt, to volunteer. Orwell, famously, was in the militia of the POUM, which was targeted as a “Trotskyist” organisation and suppressed in 1937.
Charlie Nurse
Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge