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). In 1976, June Namias interviewed him about his experience as an immigrant in the United States. Under the pseudonym Andrés Aragón, Rubia Barcia revealed that the US authorities persecuted him 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 studied his autobiographical, essayistic, and poetic works, which include: Tres en uno: auto sacramental a la usanza antigua (1940), Umbral de sueños (1961), A aza enraizada: Cántigas de Bendizer (1997) (FOX, 2009; JOHNSON, 2009, 1982; HERRERA, 2009).

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The editor of España Libre, Jesús González 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). Also, more than two hundred members of the resistance were being tortured in Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Seville, Gijón, Zaragoza, and Bilbao.

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

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