Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, November 1st, 1938, 250,000 people gather in Barcelona, Spain to bid farewell

and give their thanks to the masses of foreign volunteers who had come to Spain over the previous

years to fight in and otherwise support the Spanish Civil War. These were left-leaning

men and women from all over the globe coming to the popular front cause in its battle against

conservative forces led by Francisco Franco who would of course go on to be Spain's

dictator in the decades after this moment we've gotten a number of requests to talk about this moment. The

young men and women who chose to go join the Spanish cause, many of them from

the United States, coming together in groups that would be given names like the

Lincoln Battalion or the John Brown

Battalion. A special shout out to listener Matt in particular who wrote a bunch of

ideas about this and really prompted it and I've also mentioned on this show my

fascination with this moment and in particular how after visiting Spain the summer before last I read this beautiful book called Spain in our hearts, Americans in the Spanish Civil War. And guess what? We have the author of that book today as our special

guest, the legendary writer and journalist Adam Hochschild. There's far too much to list here,

but Adam is the author of King Leopold's

Ghost, co-founder of Mother Jones magazine. Last year's book was American

midnight about America in the period just after the First World War. He has won every award there is to win. But Adam, thank you so much for joining us. It's a real honor and thank you for writing Spain in our hearts. I really, really loved it.

Oh, thank you, Jody. It's a pleasure to be with you and I, thank you Jody.

It's a pleasure to be with you and I'm glad you're marking this anniversary.

And here as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.

Hello there., Jody.

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