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“For this They Fight”: Canadians in the Spanish Civil War
Michael Petrou, the 2018 Martin Wise Goodman Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.
More than 1,600 Canadians volunteered to fight for the Spanish Republic during Spain’s civil war of 1936-1939 — more, per capita, than volunteered from almost any other country. Yet Spain was an ocean away from Canada, and virtually none of the Canadian volunteers had any obvious ties to Spain. Why, then, did so many choose to fight there?
A longtime foreign correspondent, Petrou has reported from across the Middle East, Europe, and Central Asia. He has a doctorate in modern history from Saint Antony’s College, University of Oxford, and is the author of Renegades: Canadians in the Spanish Civil War.