Call to Arms: Communist Ephemerao of Madrid During the Spanish Civil War

Title: ¡Camesinos!
Title translation: Countrymen
Author/Publisher Group: Socorro Rojo Internacional / Comité Provincial de Guadalajara
Place of Publication: Madrid
Publication Date: c. 1936-1939
Label/Document Translation:

"The translation here is the first paragraph from this small broadside and it gives a sense of how the Socorro Rojo Internacional portrayed Italian involvment on the side of the fascists. "Foreign men have seized half [of] Spain; in [the area which] the Italians rule, ordering the spaniards, whom they despise, and making children learn their language, because they still do not belong to Spain, but to Italy. There, where there is fascism, the countrymen return to being slaves of their old masters: for the tyrants; they work from sunrise to sunset and they leave their miniscule profits in the hands of the usurers. Misery is great. The children of the workers in the field and in the city do not have a school where [they can] learn and they work from infancy. The women are victims of the whims of the young masters; and when they protest against their miserable life, [the masters] answer to them that they have been born for working, and nothing more than working. They say that they are Catholics and they kill women and children; also the priests who do not accept being slaves to foreigners. In short: fascism is poverty, ruin, misery, usury...Only the tyrants and usurers live well with it, at the cost of your sweat and the sweat of your children. Opposing them are the Spanish people, the workers, the campesinos, who arise to defend the independence of Spain, carrying on the tradition of dying before seeing Spain ruled by foreigners."