Alexia Orengo Green, under the supervision of Karl Qualls, created a series of maps using Geographic Information System (GIS) in order to analyze and visualize the data from Memoria: en memoria de los combatientes españoles que cayeron luchando contra el fascismo y por la libertad junto al pueblo ruso en la Segunda Guerra Mundial, 1941-1945 (Madrid: Fundación Nostalgia, 2000), which is a record Spaniards displaced during the Spanish Civil War who then died in the USSR during the Second World War. The process began with the creation of a master spreadsheet using Excel that was divided into two sheets--combat deaths and non-combat deaths—to mirror the structure of the book. Each sheet had subdivisions that contained the person’s full name, original text from the book, cause and date of death, etc. In sorting the data, we decided to make a series of maps, which required decimal coordinates to known locations of events. Spreadsheets were uploaded to GIS and utilizing the “XY to Point” tool were plotted on the map. After the points were plotted on the map, several variations were created depending on the information the data showed. Each map has several variations which may include the simple points and gradual colors or sizes of the points that indicate the number of Spanish youths in a point. After the maps were created, they were exported as a layout for further use. The individuals identified in Memoria are not exclusively the niños de la Guerra discussed in Stalin’s Niños. The “combat death” group in particular includes many adults and youth who came to the USSR at the end of the Spanish Civil War and did not enter the boarding school environment that is the subject of Stalin’s Niños.
