José Rubia Barcia (1914–1997), a professor at California State University, Los Angeles, had been a student of the socialist professor Fernando de los Ríos at the University of Granada. Rubia Barcia went into exile in Cuba after his name appeared on a list of individuals scheduled to be executed by the Franco regime (ORDAZ ROMAY, 1999: 245). There, he founded the Escuela Libre de la Habana in 1940, which operated until 1943 (AMO and SHELBY, 1950: 103). June Namias interviewed him in 1976 about his experience as an immigrant in the United States. Under the pseudonym Andrés Aragón, Rubia Barcia revealed that he was persecuted by the US authorities for believing him to be a communist (NAMIAS, 1978: 92–101). Rubia Barcia published regularly on Spanish literature, exiled authors, and Franco's regime in Free Spain; some of his essays were later collected in Prosas de Razón y Hiel (1976). He was a scholar of Valle-Inclán, Unamuno, Américo Castro, and Luis Buñuel. More than a dozen manuscripts attest to his contribution to Hispanism in the United States. Soledad Fox and Javier Herrera have recently studied his autobiographical, essayistic, and poetic works, which include: Tres en uno: auto sacramental a la usanza antigua (Three in One: A Sacramental Play in the Old Fashioned Style) (1940), Umbral de sueños (Three in One: A Sacred Play in the Old Fashioned Style) (Umbral de sueños, Threshold of Dreams, 1961), A aza enraizada: Cántigas de Bendizer (Roots in the Wind: A Selection of Testimonies on the Life and Work Outside Spain of an Iberian Exile) (Words to the Wind: A Selection of Testimonies on the Life and Work Outside Spain of an Iberian Exile) (1997) (FOX, 2009; JOHNSON, 2009, 1982; HERRERA, 2009).

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The editor of España Libre, Jesús Gonzalez Malo, wrote to Rubia Barcia on October 9, 1961, asking her to sponsor the newspaper and suggest other sponsors. A month later, Alberto Uriarte asked for her help and publicity for the international protest campaign launched by España Libre against the detention and incommunicado detention of the liberation trade union leader Ramón Álvarez in France. The French government had suspended the weekly publications Solidaridad Obrera (Paris), CNT, El Socialista, and España Libre (Toulouse). More than two hundred members of the resistance were being tortured in Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Seville, Gijón, Zaragoza, and Bilbao.

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He wrote to Rubia Barcia again on October 21, 1963, asking for her support in the newspaper's protest against the recent arrests of Asturian miners. Rubia Barcia was disappointed. She had been in Spain with Carmen Aldecoa, and they had seen many anti-Francoists who had thrown in the towel. González Malo assures us that the underground and worker resistance led by ASO is alive and well.

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Read blog by invited Scholar Dr. David Miranda-Barreiro.