Memorial for the Belgian Members of the International Brigades Who Died in Spain

“To the memory of the Belgian volunteers of the International Brigades who died defending democratic freedoms”. This is the inscription, written in French and Flemish, on the plinth of the monument to the Belgian members of the IB who died in Spain that is located in the St. Gilles cemetery in the town of Uccle, not far from Brussels. On the cement posts that hold the chain that surrounds the monument one can read the names of the places where they died: Madrid, Jarama, Guadalajara, Caspe-Ebro, Guadarrama and Huesca. Erected in 1976, this modest monument was the product of an initiative of some Uccles city councillors who wanted to express their opposition to the Francoist dictatorship. The surviving volunteers gathered there once a year until 2009. Today, with all of them having died, it is the site of occasional commemorations organized by cultural associations dedicated to historical memory. 

In Brussels itself there is a work of art, “Pasionaria” by Emilio López-Menchero, that recalls the Civil War and its consequences. Unveiled in 2006, it uses the figure of Dolores Ibárruri to dedicate this space to the generations of Spanish and Moroccan immigrants who arrived in Belgium in the 1950s and 1960s. It consists of a giant megaphone that references the one that appears on Joris Ivens’ 1937 documentary The Spanish Earth broadcasting one of her speeches to soldiers at the front. It is located near the Midi train station, where many Spanish and Moroccan immigrants arrived in Belgium, and as the artist has explained, it symbolizes the public voices which is a political voice that needs to make itself heard.