Manuel Azaña made three visits to the French front during the First World War. The first of these occurred in 1916. From that experience, he brought with him a collection of 40 photographic plates showing the terrible effects caused by the bombings in some French cities. These images were taken by photographers from press agencies working for the French army.
Azaña, who was an active supporter of the Allied cause, wrote and gave several lectures on the war and its effects.
At one of those conferences, the one pronounced at the Ateneo de Madrid in 1917 under the title Reims and Verdun (Impressions of a trip to France), Azaña used the photographic plates that he had brought from the French front and that have been preserved by the Ateneo de Madrid.
A century later, the University of Alcalá de Henares, the Ateneo de Madrid, the City Council of Alcalá de Henares, the Henares Forum and the Largo Caballero Foundation organized an exhibition showing these shocking photographs.
The catalogue of this exhibition, which has been ceded by the Ateneo Library and Archive, has a double value, since it not only collects the images collected by Azaña in France, but each of them has been accompanied by quotations both from the conference given by Azaña in 1917 at the Ateneo and from the article entitled Our Mission in France, published by Azaña in the issue of January-March 1917.Bulletin Hispanique XIX. The set of texts and photographs in this catalogue chronicles the horror of war, the suffering that armed conflicts cause in people and the damage suffered by the historical heritage.
