Overview of modern foreign publications on the evacuation of Basque children to the Great Britain in 1937 during the civil war in Spain

Introduction. The historic episode of the evacuation of 4,000 Basque children to Great Britain after the bombing of Guernica was a striking and dramatic event in the Spanish Civil War. Despite a forty-year period of oblivion, since the 1980s after Spain’s transition to democracy, there has been a surge in interest in this topic, which has not subsided in foreign studies until this moment. Methods and materials. This article uses a problematic approach to select the most interesting and relevant research on such a specific topic as the evacuation of Basque children to Great Britain in May 1937. Moreover, such general scientific theoretical methods as: analysis, comparison, generalization and forecasting are used. Analysis. In the course of the analysis, the article investigates both the main directions of modern research on this topic and the approaches on which these publications are based. The most interesting author’s conclusions and ideas are considered, a comparative analysis of publications is carried out, and promising topics for future research are proposed. Results. One of the characteristic features of modern publications on the evacuation of Basque children to the UK is their emphasis on the psychological component and cognitive aspects, but each publication does this differently. The authors pay great attention to the issue of identity and find many interesting explanations why, in the end, the self-designation of oneself as “Basque children” played a key role in the formation and maintenance of collective identity. All publications to one degree or another touch upon such an aspect as the formation of a sacrificial image of Basque children in the media, which pursued certain political goals.