Foreign Correspondents in Madrid's Civil War: Dynamics and Identities

Abstract

The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War captivated the international media's attention. At a time of heightened tensions between fascism and communism, many saw the Spanish conflict as a testing ground for a larger confrontation. As a result, major international media outlets sent their most renowned correspondents to Madrid. Hemingway, Herbert Matthews, Sefton Delmer, John Dos Passos, Mikhail Koltsov, and others were among the correspondents stationed in Spain during this period. Latin American correspondents such as Binns and Cano Reyes, as well as female figures like the Mexican American Anita Brenner, who wrote numerous chronicles from Spain for the United States, were also present. This article aims to trace the working dynamics of these correspondents in Madrid from July 1936 to April 1939. In doing so, it seeks to understand how the information that emerged from the capital passed through censorship filters and ultimately established mediated parameters of the Spanish reality.