1st International ICAH Symposium

The Spanish Civil War: South America, the Caribbean and Gibraltar.

Situated at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, the port of Gibraltar became a port of emigration for Spanish immigrants in the late 19th century, especially so to southern South America. But many Latin American emigrants also set foot on European soil for the first time in British Gibraltar. Gibraltar maintained its role as an international transit port and transhipment point for all types of goods between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, as well as between Europe and Africa, for long stretches of the 20th century. During the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939, thousands of Latin American international brigadists infiltrated Spain, but the defeat of the Popular Front also led to huge movements of refugees from Spain, which bordered three countries to which it was possible to flee on foot (France, Andorra and Portugal). Many of them ended up in internment camps (France, Gibraltar, Andorra), others were even sent back to Franco’s Spain. The lectures at this first symposium initiate a series of events on Atlantic history to take place in Gibraltar and will focus on the Spanish Civil War and its links with Latin America and the Caribbean on the occasion of its 90th anniversary (1936-39).