Monument to the Swiss men and women of the International Bridages who fought to defend freedom and democracy in Spain (1936-1938)

Inaugurated in Geneva on June 17, 2000, this four metre high, stainless steel works shows three female figires, representing the Swiss women who were part of the International Brigades. The monuments sits on a square metal surface on which is inscribed the famous speech given by La Pasionaria during the farewell parade of the IBs in Barcelona in October 1938. 

The monument was financed by by the city of Geneva following a motion in parliament in 1996. It was created Manuel Torres, an artist from Málaga who emigrated to Switzerland as a metal worker in the 1960s before starting a career as a sculptor. 

The monument is one of the products of the mobilization of numerous political and trade union groups, as well as IB veterans, to rehabilitate the memory of the more than 800 Swiss who volunteered to defend the Republic and who, on their return, were convicted by military courts of not respecting Swiss neutrality and the military code that prohibits serving in foreign armies. A conservative regime that banned the Communist Party in 1940, Swiss officialdom adopted a hardline attitude towards the volunteers. And, during the decades that followed, the figure of the volunteers remained controversial : well-regarded in some military circles, they were considerd almost criminal in others. Finally,in 2009, seventy years after the end of the Civil War, the Swiss parliament rehabilitated them.  

The first phase of the struggle to recognize the volunteers was characterized by the inauguration of commemorative plaques in Zurich and Geneva on the fortieth and fiftieth anniversaryof the outbreak of the Civil War, respectively, dedicated to those who had died in Spain, and a stele to the volunteers in the canton of Ticino (1978). These were the result of the initiative of private individuals, located in places with symbolic meaning for the labour movement, and often controvesial. The 1990s, however, marked a turning point. A number of municipalities created publicly-funded sites of memory : the monument in Geneva in 2000, the International Brigades Square in La Chaux-de-fonds in 2003 and a mosaic in Castel San Pietro  (Ticiono) in 2010.Likewise, in 2012, a plaque honouring the women and men who fought against « Fascism and for democracy and Freedom ». 

These more recent plaques and monuments adopt a new discourse about the past. The homage to comrades who died in battle is less central as the memory of the survivors and female auxiliaries is included, and municipal authorities now publicly recognize the struggles of the Swiss volunteers as an exemplary example of the defence of democracy and freedom.