John G. Hovan, 93, gets a kiss from his 18-year-old granddaughter, Johanna Martin after he received honorary Spanish citizenship.

The Providence Journal Connie Grosch

PROVIDENCE –– In July 1937, John G. Hovan boarded a boat bound for France.

The 21-year-old, who was between jobs, told friends and others that he wanted to knock around the Continent.

In truth, Hovan headed to Spain, where civil war had broken out a year earlier and where thousands of other foreign volunteers joined to fight the rising Fascist powers of Benito Mussolini’s Italy and Adolf Hitler’s Germany that were testing the weapons they would later use in World War II.

Seventy years after the war ended, Hovan, now 93 and a Providence resident, signed papers that will grant him Spanish citizenship –– and allow him to vote in a country that now boasts a parliamentary democracy.

“It was a difficult moment in the world, and they risked their lives,” said Spanish Consul General Carlos Robles, whose family, too, was split by the war. “We respect that, and would like to honor that in a small way.”

Last year, the Spanish government approved a “historic memory” law allowing foreign volunteers, such as Hovan, who fought the military uprising to apply for Spanish citizenship while retaining their current citizenship.When asked by consul officials to pick a city in which to register for voting purposes –– as a Spanish citizen, Hovan will be able to vote in the local and regional elections in addition to the general elections –– Hovan picked Tarazona, Zaragoza, about 178 miles northeast of Madrid.

“I remember many wonderful people” there, said Hovan, adding he especially remembers “the warmth of the Spanish people in spite of the suffering,”

Fewer than 25 members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade –– the main name that about 2,800 American volunteers that served in the war are known –– are alive.

An estimated 500,000 people died during the war, including about a third of the American volunteers, according to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives.

Born in Florida to a Czechoslovakian working-class family, Hovan grew up during the Great Depression. He left school in his teens and worked with unemployment rights groups and the American League Against War and Fascism.

“I learned that Fascism was completely against democracy, and that if we were going to pursue democratic life not only in our country, but [also in] other countries, Fascism had to be stopped,” he said.

Concealing his plans from his family, Hovan applied for his passport –– which at the time the government stamped: “Not valid for travel to Spain.”

He headed to New York with two other men from Florida, one of whom would die in Spain, and boarded the boat. The three were part of a group of 30 to 40 volunteers who headed to Spain to fight against the military-Fascist uprising. The men, Hovan said, avoided congregating on the boat so as not to attract attention.

By the time they arrived in France, the border had been closed, he said. “So we had to climb the [Pyrenees] mountains.”

Once over the border, it was on to Albacete, roughly 166 miles southeast of Madrid, the headquarters of the International Brigades, the Republican military units made up of foreign volunteers whose feats were recounted in thousands of dispatches by the likes of John Dos Passos and Jay Allen and popularized by Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.

He was stationed in Tarazona. But as a transport driver, Hovan traveled the country, with a safe-conduct pass. When the Tarazona training base had to be evacuated, Hovan went to Barcelona, where he continued working as a driver as officials devised the evacuation plan for international volunteers.

Most volunteers left by December 1938. American volunteers kept fighting at home to pressure the government to lift the arms embargo against Spain.

In March 1939, Madrid fell to the insurgents, marking the end of the war. Generalissimo Francisco Franco y Bahamonde ruled until his death in 1975.

Hovan recalls arriving in New York to crowds filling the docks waving to the returning volunteers.

“Everywhere we went, there was a party every night, sometimes two a night,” he said.

In 1941, Hovan enlisted in the Navy and was sent to the Pacific.

In 1945, he was told to report to Davisville.

But Hovan lost his first civilian job as a shoe repairman for the Navy in Davisville. The ship’s service officer told him he couldn’t explain why, but authorities had told him Hovan had to be fired, Hovan recalled.

“Of course, I didn’t give him any details, but it was because, in my record, I had been in Spain and I had also been active in such organizations that were called communist organizations,” Hovan said.

“Being in Spain really marked their lives. It made them suspicious in the eyes of the FBI for many years,” said Francisco Fernandez de Alba, a Hispanic studies professor at Wheaton College who helped Hovan during the citizenship process. “They were considered threatening by the United States. Many had hard lives and lost jobs.”

Hovan, a self-described Communist, was called to testify during Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s hearings on communist organizations in the United States. After he invoked his Fifth Amendment right to silence, his house was firebombed and painted with swastikas.

Over the years, Hovan, who had settled in Providence with his wife, Mildred, remained involved in social issues, particularly labor issues and the elderly.

He remains involved, though these days mostly by phone, he said.

Hovan visited Spain with his wife twice after Franco’s death. His wife died in 2005.

Now living in the Charlesgate North apartments in Providence, Hovan said he hopes to make it to Spain at least one more time.

“Fight for justice and you can stay younger,” he said.

–– With reports from the Associated Press

marmenta@projo.com