The jury for the 2024 biennial Josep Termes Award for the promotion of young research in the Catalan language has awarded the prize to the work Class and Nation in Anarchist Mobilizing Discourses during the Spanish Civil War (July 1936 – May 1937) by the young researcher Víctor Burgos i Portabella.

The jury appreciated the archival work and the historiographical approach of the text, which examines how anarcho-syndicalist propaganda fused the concepts of “class” and “nation” to give the war a sense of a liberation struggle. National and class-based, loaded with historical references, symbols, and meanings of a Spanish identity opposed to that of the insurgents. Against the black Spain, the anarcho-syndicalists opposed the proletarian Spain. The discursive strategies developed by anarchist publicists aimed to dispute the meaning of the nation with their Francoist enemies, who called themselves “nationals” in a context of conflict.

This work will be published after the summer in the “Rosa de Foc” collection, like the previous awards, with the support of Editorial Afers and Grup Transversal, which is the entity that financially endows the prize, worth 2,000 euros.

Víctor Burgos i Portabella is a PhD candidate in Contemporary History in the “Society and Culture” Doctoral Program at the University of Barcelona, with a thesis project entitled Gender, Identities, and Anarchist Political Culture during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Previously, he graduated in history and completed a master's degree in contemporary history and the present world at the same university. His research interests are the history of anarchism, the cultural history of war, and studies on the processes of nationalization.