In particular the British fighters, such as Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell).
Were they charged with any offences when they returned to their home countries?
How were they regarded by the wider public in their home countries?
Were they questioned about their activities?
Were they allowed to return home at all?
Swedish volunteers were about 550 who served in the international brigades, of which 164 fell in battle and about 50 that served in militias or the regular army.
Generally they were not prosecuted when they returned to Sweden, despite breaking the law of enrollement in foreign armies of the time. They were greeted by large crowds and generally welcomed as heroes, at least by left-wing elements of society.
However, the Swedish security police (SÄPO) and large parts of the industrial corporations maintained a blacklist of "subversive" elements and many of the volunteers were added to the list, making it increasingly difficult for them to find work until ww2 ended unemployment. Since the blacklist was secret there were no way to clear your name from it. Many of those listed on it had to emigrate in order to find reliable work.
Those on the blacklist were also considered unreliable by the army 1940-43 and men on the list were not issued weapons and were placed in labour camps instead of regular army units when called up for their conscription service. Note that they had the same right to leave, rations, quarters and pay as regular soldiers - they were just isolated and not given arms. Since the army lacked legal means to force the soldiers to work, many camps turned into impromptu communist education camps as the men would march out to the construction site, sit down and hold lectures in communist ideology and then march back for supper. When the conscription service was over, the men were allowed to go home again. 600-700 men were interned this way 1940-43 and about 3 000 were intended to be placed in camps in case of a total mobilisation before Minister of Defence Per Edvin Sköld found out about it and closed the camps down and ordering the military to integrate the soldiers into regular army units again.
While the volunteers in Finland were officially recognised both by the supreme command of the army and the government, the volunteers in Spain never got such a recognition. They recieved no extra help for any war-related problems such as PTSD and many turned to alcohol to lessen the symptons of war-related problems and alchoholism was rampant among the veterans of Spain.
The International Brigades were disbanded in 1938, on its return members of the British Battalion were met Victoria Station by luminaries including Clement Atlee who would go on to become British Prime Minister but at the time was already a very prominent member of the Labour movement and more or less an establishment figure. There were no charges or arrests.
How they were regarded by the greater public is probably entirely dependent on the political views of that member of the public. For those on the left they were regarded as being heroic anti-fascists, and some right-wingers called them dupes of the USSR. There is a good amount of evidence that many did regard them favourably as there was a significant mobilisation of the British labour movement and wider civil society in favour of Republican Spain and Republican Spanish refugees, probably the most notable and successful example of this was the Basque Children's Committee.
Sources:
Bill Alexander, British Volunteers for Liberty, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1982. https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/explorefurther/digital/scw/more/aid/
Around 600 Dutch volunteered in Spain. The Dutch government had adopted a neutral policy of non-intervention and did everything in its power to enforce this.
First it meant that Spanish people could not come to The Netherlands and raise money for one of the two sides. A lecture by a Spanish priest was forbidden because it was a 'political move', raising money became forbidden, and an Ambulance with the word 'Republica' on it had to be partially covered.
Dutch laws prevent a law that would forbid Dutch people to go fighting in Spain. The government stated that people would lose their citizenship if they would fight in Spain. New passports were made 'useless' with a specific stamp. This did not have a lot of effect. The government made a law in 1937 that made it punishable to recruit volunteers for Spain and enter foreign military service. The Dutch government started for the first time with an active policy of investigation and prosecution.
However, the majority of the 600 volunteers were by this time already in Spain. Many Dutch volunteers [mainly communists] did however lose their citizenship over the years, and it took in many cases till the 60s to get it back (because of many anti-Communist governments in the years after the Spanish Civil War).
It was a very surrealistic situation because many veterans of the Spanish Civil War were active in the Resistance Movements of WOII playing crucial roles in it. Many Dutch volunteers of the Waffen-SS were given their citizenship back before these veterans of the Spanish Civil War totally ridiculous ofc.
In 1969 there were still 11 veterans of the Spanish Civil War without citizenship [estimated]. In the 70s and 80s appreciation of these volunteers increased and now they even have their own official monument.
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