Wise and Foolish Dreamers

Wise and Foolish Dreamers is a short festival and exhibition highlighting the heroism of Welsh volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War running at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Abertawe (Swansea) this weekend.

Lest we forget, there were 174 volunteers from Wales — 118 of them from the mining communities of South Wales — of whom 33 lost their lives in the conflict.

The exhibition is the work of pupils from St Thomas Primary School and Ysgol Cynlais, Ystradgynlais, along with children from Penglais Comprehensive School in Aberystwyth. After the festival, the exhibition will tour 20 venues in Wales. The children’s work has also resulted in a book and a DVD and is being turned into an education pack for teachers to help other children learn about an important part of our history. Greg Lewis, who has written a book about Spanish Civil War veteran Bob Peters, helped organise the project.

The festival events include:
An Evening of Tri-lingual Poetry led by Menna Elfyn
To Die in Madrid (Documentary 1963)
Land and Freedom (1995)
Return Journey — The Spanish Civil War (BBC Documentary 2006)
Some Other War (rehearsed reading of a work-in-progress)
Gypsy Jazz Party with The Amigos

Viva la Quince Brigada,
rumba la rumba la rumba la.
Viva la Quince Brigada,
rumba la rumba la rumba la
que se ha cubierto de gloria,
¡Ay Manuela! ¡Ay Manuela!
que se ha cubierto de gloria,
¡Ay Manuela! ¡Ay Manuela!

The British Battalion was part of the XV Brigade; you can hear an mp3 of ‘Viva la XV Brigada’.