At the time Dutch publishing house Raket & Lont were compiling a book of comics and essays about the Spanish Civil War and has unearthed the CNT's archives at Amsterdam's International Institute for Social History.

The archives had been smuggled out of Spain in 1937 and arrived in Amsterdam by way of England, but had languished in obscurity for five decades due to a post-revolutionary factionism among the CNT's former members.

Dutch cartoonist Johannes van der Weert, formerly of the communist punk band The Rondos, arranged for members of The Ex to visit the archive and then to publish the photos, highlighting the revolution from the perspective of anarchist achievement rather than the war and defeat under fire by Axis forces.

In 1997 The Ex rereleased 1936: The Spanish Revolution as a five-inch square hardback book in tandem with Scottish/American publisher AK Press, this time issuing the double single as a pair of mini-CDs.

[5] The website AllMusic later called the book a "powerful and enlightening visual document that casts a fresh light on a major historical event little understood in the United States," and said that The Ex's music "find them inviting the spirit of the revolution as if it occurred five minutes ago, not 50 years past.