Spain's Martyred Cities: From the Battle of Madrid to Picasso's Guernica

Spain's Martyred Cities studies international reactions to the Spanish Civil War between the Battle of Madrid in November 1936 and the bombing of Guernica in April 1937. Many of the iconic events of the war belong to this key period, when international perceptions of the conflict were decisively shaped. The subject is approached through French and British newspapers and pamphlets, and events are linked to both their immediate press coverage and subsequent literary and artistic representations. For contemporaries, the aerial bombardments of Madrid, Guernica and other cities formed part of a single unbroken narrative. It was only later that Guernica acquired its perceived symbolic primacy. Censored reports of the French correspondent Louis Delapree on the bombing of Madrid and his earliest reporting (July-October 1936) were from both the Nationalist and Republican zones, and are used to provide an introductory overview of the early stages of the war. This book shows that Delapree's reports were also an important catalyst in Picasso's artistic involvement in the war, culminating in his Guernica."