Not surprisingly, this being the 75th anniversary of the start of the Spanish Civil War, this was an emotional day for everyone, ourselves included, at the annual memorial of the International Brigades Memorial Trust.
In addition to the annual laying of commemorative wreaths by Brigaders, their families, the IBMT themselves, Catalonian and Spanish Governments, and others at the memorial statue in Jubilee Gardens, there was also a round of powerful and moving speeches as well as a variety of music,.
In terms of the music, we had the socialist choir, The Strawberry Thieves, resplendent in their red T-shirts, singing the songs of the International Brigaders such as The Valley of Jarama.
We were asked to perform three songs. We chose The Bite, Only for Three Months and, given the sad news of her passing earlier this year, we gave the first public performance of our new song The English Penny, in honour of Penny Feiwel and all of those who served in the medical services in the Spanish Civil War.
Then the cast of the musical ‘Goodbye to Barcelona’ sang a number of excerpts from the show that they are currently actively seeking to raise funding for.
The event ended with The Strawberry thieves singing The Internationale.
The 200 or so people in attendance stayed on for a long time afterwards, catching up with old friends and comrades. Likewise, we chatted with lots of very interesting people over the next hour or so before repairing to a local pub that had been booked for the event - where we had a very welcome cooling pint after a hot afternoon, and some very satisfying pub grub! Lots of people were interested to stop and have a chat with us about our music and I fell into a conversation with a wonderful and sprightly woman in her 80s who had spent a lot of her younger years in my hometown of Middlesbrough. She told me many things about the fights in the 1930s there, between communists and fascists – stories I was completely unaware of.
Thanks go to John Tennant for looking after us so well on the day and giving our equipment a lift to the pub. We hope to catch up with him later in the year at the Unity Folk Club in London.