El «Comité international de coordination et d’information pour l’aide à l’Espagne républicaine» (CICIAER) y la red frentepopulista de organismos de ayuda

Aurelio Velázquez Hernández

doi:10.14198/pasado.24368

Authors

Aurelio Velázquez Hernández Universidad de Cantabria, Spain https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0001-4595

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14198/pasado.24368

Keywords:

CICIAER, Front popular policy, Anti-fascism, Transnational networks, Humanitarian aid, Propaganda

Abstract

From a humanitarian history perspective, the article studies the configuration of a transnational coordination network of aid organizations supporting the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). This network was, mostly, composed of entities that were clearly politically oriented and organized on the lines of an anti-fascist popular front policy. The text focuses essentially on the analysis of the central organization of this network: the Comité international de coordination et information pour l’aide à l’Espagne républicaine (CICIAER) based in Paris. We will analyse the performance of this agency and the configuration of a complex institutional structure derived from it. We will look at its main activities, as well as the scope of its propaganda and fund-raising campaigns. We will try to explore how links were established with other front-populist international agencies to generate a whole aid network spread over more than twenty countries and we will examine the functioning of this network and the uneven commitment of the various organisations that were part of it. Through the analysis of the discourses and propaganda produced by this organisation and transmitted through its network of associated organisations, we will try to determine to what extent these organisations respond to purely humanitarian dynamics and objectives or were instrumentalised as a mechanism for disseminating the messages produced by the Communist International for the propagation of the anti-populist policies that they were trying to advocate since the VII World Congress held in 1935.

Funding

Esta investigación se ha realizado en el marco del Proyecto Ayuda Humanitaria conflictos bélicos y desplazamientos de población en Europa (1914-1951). HAR2017-87188-P (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. Dirección General de Investigación Científica.

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