Spanish Civil War: Women as International Organizers

Kathleen Brown

Dedicated to the children of Gaza, who deserve all good things in life.

Children from the American-sponsored children’s housing in Cantonigrós stand in front of a vehicle donated “to the Spanish children” by the North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy.*

GENERAL FRANCISCO FRANCO’S fascist coup against the democratically elected Second Spanish Republic in 1936 was executed with the latest killing technology of the time.

With the help of Nazi German Luftwaffe’s Condor Legion and fascist Italy’s air and naval power, Franco used aerial bombardment as a weapon of terror aimed at overwhelming and demoralizing his “enemy” — the poorly armed Spanish working class and peasantry.

Some of these war crimes are well known, like the Nazi firebombing of the Basque village of Guernica on April 26, 1937, immortalized by Pablo Picasso in his anguished tableau. Others, like the “Desbandá” massacre on the Málaga-Almeria highway in February 1937, are only now receiving attention.

Between February 6 and February 8, 1937 German, Italian and Spanish forces bombed and strafed some 150,000 civilians fleeing along the coastal road to Almeria. Historians estimate that between 3,000-5,000 people were killed, and survivors of the massacre recalled leaving their dead loved ones on the side of the road, unburied.

Crisis: Hunger and Disease

The fascist ground and aerial offensives created a massive humanitarian crisis for Republican Spain. Malnutrition and communicable diseases were the leading causes of death for Spanish children even before the war, and hunger skyrocketed as Franco’s forces occupied the key agricultural lands and attacked merchant ships attempting to deliver goods to the Republic.

Hunger was particularly acute in Madrid, and the sight of orphaned or displaced children picking through garbage was commonplace. As the war continued, basic goods like meat, milk, and soap became almost impossible to find. Soap production was badly disrupted because the Republic could not acquire lye, a key soap-making ingredient, which resulted in skin infections and the spread of infectious diseases.

Wave after wave of people fled Franco’s advances into Republican-held territory, increasing from one million in 1936 to two million by August 1938, and up to three million by December of that year.(1)

The Republican government and local councils struggled to absorb millions of internally displaced people while simultaneously waging a defensive war. Seeking help, government representatives called on international solidarity to fill the immense gap in resources.

Mobilizing Aid

Some of the aid organizations that responded operated in both Rebel and Loyalist areas, like the Friends Service Committee and the International Committee of the Red Cross, while others — Communist, Socialist and liberal — took a partisan position in favor of the Republic.

For these latter groups, aid was even more important given the arms embargo levied against Spain by the United States, Britain, and France. The embargo prohibited the democratically elected government from purchasing weapons or essential supplies on the open market — even as Hitler, Mussolini, and Western industrialists openly funneled tanks, planes, soldiers and oil to Franco.

Aid for Republican Spain then became a revolt against fascism and a rebuke to the so-called democratic countries’ policy of appeasement.

In the United Sates, the North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy (NAC) and the American Medical Bureau (AMB) were the two major organizations that coordinated aid collection from across the United States. The AMB sponsored multiple medical delegations to Spain, which included well-known medical volunteers Dr. Edward Barksky, Dr. Arnold Donowa, and nurse Salaria Kea.

Throughout 1937 and 1938 local chapters of the NAC held benefit concerts, dances, auctions, film showings, lectures, canned milk, soap and clothing drives and house parties to raise funds, which were sent to France.

Children in New York City collected scrap metal and cans to sell, donating the proceeds to the NAC. Unions, student groups, Hollywood writers and actors, professional organizations, and ethnic and race-based groups raised funds to send more than 150 ambulances to Spain, often touring them across the country before shipping them abroad.

By early 1939, the NAC and AMB had channeled over a million dollars’ worth of goods to Spain.(2)

October 1937, Children’s Colony outside of Barcelona: Includes Constance Kyle (standing on righthand side, wearing a dark sweater and skirt) and Thyra Edwards (center of photograph surrounded by children, looking downward).

In the face of a hostile mainstream press that repeated pro-Fascist talking points and the government policy of “neutrality,” organizers struggled to make Americans aware of the danger of fascism. Educational and propaganda efforts began to take greater urgency.

In the summer of 1937 a subcommittee of the NAC, the Social Workers Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy (SWC), sent five social workers the Republic to investigate the conditions of Spanish civilians and report their findings back in the United States.

Social workers Constance Kyle and Virginia Malbin of Chicago, Rose Leff Gregg and Jen Berman Chakin of New York City, and Lilian Emder of Philadelphia traveled in early August 1937. Malbin later described her mission:

“The American people were not getting the full details. Very little was being told about what was happening to the non-fighters, the civilians, the kids, the refugees. And that was our job.”(3)

Four members of the delegation returned to the United States to lead speaking tours and fundraising efforts, while Constance Kyle remained in Spain to coordinate aid to internationally sponsored children’s homes.

These women worked professionally as social workers but could better be described as organizers and activists. They were deeply active in movements against poverty, racism and fascism. Virigina Malbin recalled that she became a social worker to “help right the wrongs of society” and explained that her “radicalism stemmed from [seeing] people suffering unnecessarily.”

Organizing a left-wing tendency within the profession, Malbin and Kyle argued for social workers to support the CIO unionization campaigns and federal unemployment benefits. They collaborated with unemployed workers in a type of inside-outside strategy to secure relief benefits.

These women were activists in their workplaces and schools: in 1935, Jen Chakin led a 500-strong walkout with her coworkers at the New York Jewish Social Services Association, demanding union recognition.(4) As a student, Virginia Malbin protested anti-Black discrimination at the University of Chicago and witnessed the Chicago police Red Squad attack a solidarity demonstration with Ethiopia, shocking her into action.(5)

Constance Kyle, although white, had been a member of the National Negro Congress and organized for labor and civil rights. Thyra Edwards, who toured children’s homes in Spain in October 1937, was a keen internationalist whose work spanned solidarity efforts with Ethiopia to unionization of African American women textile workers in Chicago.

Records show that Kyle and Chakin were members of the Communist Party, while Malbin and Edwards worked closely with party organizers on many initiatives.**

Terror and Aid

Arriving in August 1937, the Child Care Commission spent over three weeks in Spain, splitting their delegation up to cover more ground. What they saw profoundly affected them.

Malbin recalled her shock in meeting young mothers who were so malnourished that their teeth had fallen out during pregnancy. She traveled to Almeria, where she met refugees who survived the Desbandá, and she described children who “looked so sad, and so old, and so terrified. It was a world they couldn’t understand at all.”(6)

Constance Kyle, who stayed on in Spain to coordinate international aid with Ministry of Education, described children living in cold, unheated houses without shoes or coats. These experiences would show up in the drawings children produced during the war, which were then exhibited across Europe and the United States. They often depicted airplanes dropping bombs overhead.

“Evacuate Madrid,” drawn by Jose Luis Benlliure, age 9, from the Salem Bland Colony in Barcelona. His drawing became a greeting card sold to raise funds for Spain.

Yet the women’s assessments were far from pessimistic. Fascism had not yet triumphed, and evidence of the social revolution was all around them. The Child Care Commission described “New Spain” as they saw it: a hunger for books in a country marked by illiteracy, flourishing working-class culture and creative endeavors, women’s educational initiatives, and thousands of new schools.

The delegation reported that “wherever we went, whether to large cities or small isolated villages, we saw manifold evidence of the new life — newly opened schools for children whose parents never held a pencil in their hand; compulsory education up to the age of 14 in a land where opportunities for learning, except under the auspices of the church, had been lacking for all of the few.”(7)

A few months later, Thyra Edwards described a similar scene for the Associated Negro Press:

“No less dramatic is the story of the mobilization of the ‘retaguardia’ and the tremendous work of building, construction, education, common schools for common children, schools for adults, — the liquidation of Spain’s illiteracy, theatres, clubs, recreational centros, social services, and the amazing development of children’s colonies. This, behind the trenches, is the fight of the rear guard.”(8)

One of the most innovative interventions during the war was the emergence of colonias infantiles, or children’s colonies for displaced or orphaned children. Historians have identified at least 200 children’s colonies, mostly located throughout the Levant region.

Initially organized through labor unions and political parties, the children’s colonies were safe spaces for union members to send their children while they were fighting at the front or laboring in production efforts. Children were provided with regular meals, a clean home, and their own bed — something that many parents struggled to provide their children with before the war.

Often housed in expropriated villas of Spain’s bourgeoisie, some colonies had extensive gardens, ocean views, tennis courts and even swimming pools. Teachers lived with the children, alongside a resident nurse, director and housekeepers, and each home housed 20-100 children, grouped by age.

Colonies often hosted children of the same grade school or neighborhood to encourage greater social cohesion. Overall, the homes attempted to create a sense of safety and security, far away from the falling bombs and slum conditions of Madrid.

Visions of Liberation

Yet more than fulfilling basic needs, these colonies were also key sites of collective socialization, which educators viewed as the basis for a liberated Spain.

Progressive pedagogues from Madrid’s Grupo Escolar Cervantes and the Institución de Enseñanza Libre like Justa Freire and Angel Llorca cultivated a holistic educational model. They encouraged student inquiry about the natural world, noting that students might observe the clouds, the color of the sea, or animals around them.(9)

These questions should spur discussions and student investigations and experiments. Excursions to the mountains or the beach were built into the colonies’ routines, and exercise, play, and fresh air were just as important as time in the classroom. Evenings were dedicated to entertainment, and the children often produced their own plays and sang together.(10)

This progressive pedagogical approach was a stark departure from the hierarchical, authoritarian, and sex-segregated education of the Catholic Church, which dispensed corporal punishment alongside rote learning.

Children played a key role in the day-to-day life of the colonies. Chores such as tending the vegetable garden, cleaning the bedrooms, or setting the dining table, were done in groups that were often self-organized. Older children were asked to guide and mentor younger ones.(11)

Records show that children advocated for themselves: in one instance after a beloved director was assigned to a new post and a less agreeable professor replaced him, the children protested and wrote to their local council insisting on the return of their original professor.(12)

Children attending classes outdoors, Picaña, Valencia.

On special occasions the children would go on outings to other villages, or on a hike in the mountains or a visit to the beach. When Christmas neared, the Ministry of Education organized Children’s Week (Semana del Niño) complete with group excursions to the cinema and parties at each colonia.

Fifty-five years later, Malbin recalled how impactful it was for her to witness the children’s homes:

“The biggest lift that I got was when I went to the children’s homes that were located in beautiful estates — homes that had been deserted by supporters of Franco. There were 50-60 kids in a home and they were being cared for in such a loving way with a real respect for them as children…I had worked in child welfare in the United States and I knew what happened to kids here.”

In contrast, Spanish children were given “all the good things” children needed to realize their potential, despite being “in the middle of this war-torn country.”(13)

Most colonies were funded by the Ministry of Education and the National Delegation for Evacuated Children through the government, but dozens of colonies were sponsored by international grassroots aid campaigns. Many of these homes were named after revolutionaries, like the Rosa Luxemburg Colony in Cantonigros, or the “Carlos Marx” home outside of Barcelona.

In the United States, Americans sponsored at least ten children’s colonies, which housed approximately 600 children. Some included the Ethel Taylor Home in El Perelló outside of Valencia, named after the Executive Secretary of the Social Workers Committee who died unexpectedly in the summer of 1937; the Ben Leider Memorial Home, named after New York comrade and aviator who was killed in action in February 1937; or the Joseph Selligman Memorial Home, named after Swarthmore student who was killed at Jarama in February 1937 and maintained by a NAC chapter in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.

Others were named after bourgeois American revolutionaries, like the Thomas Jefferson or George Washington Homes, reflecting the Communist Party’s Popular Front politics at the time. Thyra Edwards attempted to organize an African-American-sponsored “Frederick Douglass Home” but the war took a turn for the worse before she was able to get it off the ground.

Photographs, films, and children’s letters and drawings were regularly sent to the NAC and SWC chapters in the United States. Overwhelmingly, the photographs of the colonias depicted an idyllic life: children playing in the sun, enjoying meals, or learning in airy, light-filled classrooms.

The photographs can be read as a projection of a libertarian future: a Spain where children could live peacefully and cooperatively with full bellies and swimming pools and tennis courts for all. They were photographs of teachers and social workers who were deeply hopeful about an anti-fascist future.

Fascism Closes In

By mid-1938 it became clear that the libertarian future that the colonias infantiles represented would not come to pass. While directors attempted to offer children a stable and calm quotidian life, they were challenged by air raids, bombing attacks, and increasing food scarcity.

As Franco closed in on Barcelona and later Madrid in early 1939, the colonies emptied as mothers collected their children and hundreds of thousands of people walked onwards to France, where they would face concentration camps and forced repatriation. The full bellies and swimming pools that colony directors attempted to provide were replaced with hunger and retribution.

Justa Freire, who delighted in children’s curiosity, was sentenced to prison for six years for “aiding the rebellion” through her teaching. Hundreds of other teachers who were accused of “infecting children” with the “germ of Marxism” and sentenced to prison and sometimes even death.

Parents who were separated from their children had to prove they were politically worthy of reuniting with their children. Those were deemed unworthy were not reunited and their children were sent to convents or adopted out to fascist families.

The social workers who took part in the Child Care Commission delegation turned their sights to Spanish refugee resettlement in Mexico, and aided Jewish refugees fleeing European fascism. In the last months of the Republic, Malbin returned to Spain to assist antifascist fighters from Germany, Austria, and Italy acquire passports to relocate in Latin America, as they could not return to their home countries.

She would later reflect on her time in Spain:

“It made the biggest impact on me. When people have a vision, and they know what they’re struggling for, and they work together to accomplish it, it is in such contrast to the dog-eat-dog kind of life which we often extol as the best kind of life. This kind of cooperation and working together and realizing that the fate of every person depends on all the others around him. It is still the most important thing to learn.”(14)

The international contributions to the Aid for Spain movement were never enough to meet the humanitarian needs of an entire nation strangled by blockade and embargo, but the contributions marshalled by mainly women organizers did make a difference to the thousands of children who received it.

The efforts of such women 90 years ago are part of a longer feminist antifascist tradition that sought to preserve life at all costs. That tradition lives on in the tent schools, communal kitchens, and caretakers of Gaza’s children today. As Palestinian poet Rafeef Ziadeh reminded us: here we teach life.

*The children’s colony photographs illustrating this article are from the Spanish Refugee Relief Association Records (SRRAR), Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.

**ATC Editors’ Note: We realize that among our readers, some are familiar with the complex political struggles in the Spanish Republic and the anti-fascist war, while others are new to the subject. This includes the role of Communist parties of Spain and other countries, at Moscow’s instigation, even while defending the Republic, in vilifying and in some cases helping to murder leaders and fighters of the Spanish revolutionary left and its internationalist allies. While beyond the scope of this article on internationalist solidarity with the Spanish Republic against fascism, the story has been recounted in George Orwell’s famous Homage to Catalonia, Ken Loach’s powerful film “Land and Freedom,” and the newly published book The POUM: Republic, Revolution, and Counterrevolution by Andy Durgan (London: Resistance Books, 2025).

Notes

1. See Xavier García Ferrandis and Àlvar Martínez Vidal, “Límites de la Asistencia Médica y Social Durante la Guerra Civil Española,” Asclepio: Revista de Historia de la Medicina y de la Ciencia 68 (2), julio-diciembre 2016, 158, http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/asclepio.2016.30
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2. “Two Years of American Aid to Spain’’ Pamphlet, produced by the Medical Bureau and the North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy, 1939. Between October 1936 to October 1939 the Medical Bureau and North American Committee raised $811,087.87 in cash, shipped $365,664.75 worth of goods, sent $300,000 of food, clothing and material aboard the SS Erica Reed, established 10 homes for 600 refugee children, sent 125 doctors, nurses, and drivers, established eight American hospitals, and sent 175 ambulances, and tons of medical supplies. MS 1181, Series VII, Box 75, Folder 1, Spanish Refugee Relief Association Records (SRRAR) 1935-1957, Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Columbia University.
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3. Virginia Malbin interviewed by Francis Patai, 1985, Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. New York University, https://hdl.handle.net/2333.1/n02v75s3
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4. Matthew Friedman, “Premature Antifascists: The Story of America’s First Antifa,” June 11, 2019. http://thetypescript.com/premature-anti-fascists-the-story-of-americas-first-antifa/
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5. Malbin, op. cit.
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6. Malbin, op. cit.
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7. “Case Record of a New Spain,” Social Work Today, November 1937.
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8. Thyra Edwards, November 24, 1937, Association Negro Press News Releases, 1928-1964, Subseries 1, Box 23, Claude A. Barnett Papers.
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9. Legado Justa Freire, 2.1, Fundación Angel Llorca, Madrid, Spain.
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10. Sjaak Braster & María del Mar del Pozo Andrés, “Education and the children’s colonies in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939): the Images of the Community Ideal,” Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education, Vol. 51, No. 4, (July 2015) 461.
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11. Ministry of Public Education, Children’s Colonies, National Council for Evacuated Children, November 1937, MS#118, Series XI: Social Workers, Box 133, Folder 13, SRRAR, RBML, Columbia University.
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12. Letter from Maria to her parents, May 8, 1938, PS Madrid, Legado 2911, Caja 1166, Folder 16 Centro Documental de la Memoria Historia (CDMH), Salamanca, Spain.
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13. Virginia Malbin, interview by Francis Patai, January 25, 1991, 22:00, ALBA.AUDIO.131, Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, New York University, https://hdl.handle.net/2333.1/h70rz592
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14. Malbin, op. cit.
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March-April 2026, ATC 241