These posters from the Spanish Civil War (via Sugar'n Spicy) remind me of how close I've felt to this exceptional moment in recent history. An event which marked the end of the dream of all ideologues when a stalinist-left and falangist-right competed in the killing of a hope of freedom.

From being 14-years-old and being in Barcelona with Orwell across the pages of "Homage to Catalonia", to discovering the role it played in the lives and times of many writers and artists - from Pablo Neruda to Tina Modotti to mention only two - to the Pelican edition of "The Spanish Civil War" by Hugh Thomas which lays in ambush unread on one of my bookshelves waiting to engage my head in battle.

A song by the clash.

Not particularly keen on Ken Loach, but my heart melting during "Land and Freedom" in Nanni Moretti's cinema in Rome, one night. Alone.

Anarchists in Andalucia. A black and red flag in the land of the duende. Poets in the trenches and lovers in makeshift beds. Federico Garcia Lorca murdered at dawn on 19 August 1936.

The past I write about is drawn from cultural artifacts, the hand-granades of art. Memories of imagined flavours. So real nevertheless. All those brothers pitched one against the other. And so many dead.

No war is ever civil.