Voluntarios Internacionales de la Libertad
Near Madison, Wisconsin
At the edge of James Madison Park stands a memorial to a war fought an ocean away. Its name means International Volunteers of Liberty, and it honors the tens of thousands of foreigners who crossed borders to fight in the Spanish Civil War, from nineteen thirty-six to nineteen thirty-nine.
When General Francisco Franco's nationalists, backed by Hitler and Mussolini, moved to topple Spain's elected republic, volunteers poured in from around the world to resist. Among them were about two thousand eight hundred Americans who served in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and a striking number of them came from Wisconsin. They went without their government's blessing, many never came home, and the republic ultimately fell.
This Madison monument lists the known Wisconsin volunteers by name. It frames their fight against the spread of fascism as an early, costly stand for democracy, years before the wider world joined the same struggle.
