Homage to Caledonia: Scotland and the Spanish Civil War

Daniel Gray evokes the stories of the Scottish men and women who made their way to the Spanish Civil War.

Thirty-five thousand people from across the world volunteered to join the armed resistance in a war on fascism. However, more people, proportionately, went from Scotland than any other country, and the entire nation was gripped by conflict.

What drove so many ordinary Scots to volunteer for a foreign war?

Daniel Gray evokes the stories of the ordinary men and women who made their way to Spain over the Pyrenees: nurses and ambulance personnel who discovered for themselves the horrors of modern warfare; and the people back home who defied their poverty to give generously to the Spanish Republic cause.

Even in the war there are light-hearted moments: a Scottish volunteer drunkenly urinating in his general's boots, enduring the dark comedy of learning to shoot with sticks amidst a scarcity of rifles, or enjoying the surreal experience of raising a dram with Errol Flynn. They went from all over the country: Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Fife and the Highlands, and they fought to save Scotland, and the world, from the growing threat of fascism.

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