Always greatto hear about my book being on sale around the world. Here, last week sent by soldier from a bookshop in York; last week from an anarchist bookshop in Amsterdam.

I was impressed by this memorial we came across in Zumaia. It remembers the women and children who went into exile from this Basque seaside town fleeing Franco's forces or who were later expelled by his murderous Apartheid regime. Artist: Bego Blanco

Two remarkable images from around 1930 by Catalan photographer Emilio Godes. 1. "Landscape through a dragonfly's wing" 2. "A caterpillar" - in fact a spurge hawk-moth (Hyles euphorbiae). Anyone able to identify the former species by the wing's intricate vein pattern? @cmhmaliani.bsky.social?

Bar Popeye opened in Barcelona 11 July 1936, 1 week before the Spanish Civil War. Popeye, a proletarian hero, was v.popular on Republican side. "Mosca" and "Chato" planes bought from the USSR were often decorated with this all-American icon as they fought Francoist, Nazi and Italian fascist planes

Barcelona now, Along Parallel, tens of thousands, the multicultural city celebrating the best team by in this world cup.

#onthisday, 19 July 1936, the rebel Spanish military rose in Barcelona against the elected government. An unusual combination of anarchist and other workers with the loyal police, often fighting side by side, defeated them. By the next day. 450 lay dead. Photo Pérez de Rozas

#onthisday on 17 July 1936 the rebel military rose against ths Spanish Republic in colonial Morocco unleashing a murderous war causing incalculable pain+suffering, which still casts its shadow. Image: the Gracia family, like 100,000s, escaping into a very uncertain French exile, Jan 1939. Bastards

Dinamatero, bomb thrower, June 1937, Carabanchel, Madrid front. Gerda Taro, killed a few weeks later at Brunete, the first woman photo journalist to die in action ICP / Magnum photos.

"Vallcarca en nit de lluna" by Joan Vidal Ventosa ~1906–1907. Many of those houses, some built as summer residences for the Catalan bourgeoisie, will still be there, but are now surrounded by blocks of flats, built as Barcelona swamped the surrounding countryside. At: @museunacionalartc.bsky.social

Yellow scorpion somewhere near Torralba de los Sisones, Teruel. I like the alternative Spanish name "alacrán" from the Arabic al-ʿaqráb, the scorpion. Taken by then 9-year old Carlos Pérez Álvarez for which he won best young photographer in BBC Wildlife Magazine, 2012.

Grey heron perched on top of the otter enclosure at Barcelona zoo yesterday, I assume waiting for a fish after the nutrias have finished. More than 100 pairs of herons nest wild in the zoo's trees. Photo by my 8-year-old daughter Iona.

Match next Saturday to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the People's Olympiad, Catalonia's anti-fascist response to the Nazi Olympic games in Berlin. Between veterans of those two classic Barcelona teams: Júpiter and Europa, the former with a long leftist and republican tradition. Hope to make it!

Federico García Lorca at home (1933?). Behind is poster of his traveling univ theatre group, La Barraca which took Spanish plays of the Golden Age to provincial towns+poor villages sponsored by Republican government. He's dressed in La Barraca’s overalls. Culture for the People

Poster from 2023 exhibition in Warsaw on the Spanish Civil War, entitled “If Madrid falls today, Warsaw will fall tomorrow”, the prescient cry of Polish brigaders to defend the Spanish capital.

A chisquero (tinder lighter) of the type used in the Spanish Civil War. Orwell discusses them in Homage to Catalonia, noting "Every militiaman possessed a tinder-lighter and several yards of yellow wick. Next to his rifle it was his most important possession"

Wounded man being carried by a mule at Teruel. The British volunteers had a mule during the Ebro battle they nicknamed "Chamberlain" as they said "was so stubborn and unhelpful." One day after its rope was broken by shrapnel, it appropriately wandered off towards Franco's lines

Today the highest temperature ever in Barcelona since records began 112 years ago ... 40.9 ⁰C

"Canciones de la Resistencia Española" by Chicho Sánchez Ferlosio. Classic recorded clandestinely in Madrid and then the tapes smuggled to Sweden, where was issued in 1964 as a 10" vinyl. As Chicho sings on one track, rhyming in Spanish, "If the police heard this song, they wouldn't be happy".

Film director Carlos Saura empathetic lens on the poverty stricken southern Spain of the early 1950s. Perhaps many of these people had moved to cities within a decade. Many on today's Spanish right seem nostalgic for the social relations, deference and power structures which governed those years

Workers leaving Madrid in 1957 bound for Belgium. Much of Spain's economic boom in the latter years of the Francoist dictatorship was on the backs of the remittances sent by Spanish workers toiling in the factories of northern Europe. Photos by Manuel Iglesia

Franco in a field of 4,380 partridges he had helped to slaughter. Albacete, 1959. Source t.co/mn3ioiNpEW

Memorial to the more than 2000 Spanish Republicans used as slave labourers in the construction of the Nazi u-boat base in Bordeaux between 1941 and 1944. Many died in the appalling conditions to build this key piece in the Atlantic Wall Photo kindly sent to me by David Marsh

The editorial collective of Mujeres Libres, the anarchist women's organisation, on a terrace somewhere in Barcelona, 1937. Arxiu Fotogràfic de Barcelona.

A post like this from the Spanish embassy in London will be unthinkable from next summer assuming the hard/far right win the elections in Spain as the polls are making increasingly clear...

I would love to be driving on a road like this today watching the Peninsula pass by. (N-240, Berdún. Huesca)

Stamp produced by the CNT, 1937-38. "Helping refugees is a duty".

Garden in Paris next to City Council named after "antifascist Spanish Republicans" remembering their heroic role in city's liberation. Note flowers in Republican colours to right. I arrived in Paris at same station many InternationalBrigades left for Spain, same day Brexit vote + took this next day

Lobo. This wonderful, beautiful, evocative photo book by renowned wildlife photographer Andoni Canela documenting wolves in Spain. The texts are excellent too.

Memorial commemorating Luxembourger volunteers in the International Brigades. 102 fought against fascism in Spain, I think this is the highest in terms of population for any state, Switzerland 2nd, Scotland up their as country. Paris and Warsaw, my guess, as cities from where the highest number came

Refugees fleeing from Franco's army.(1936-38) by José Rey (AKA Sim). Part of the excellent permanent art exhibition on the Spanish Civil War at @museunacionalartc.bsky.social