The Flu Pandemic of 1918-1919 : A Political and Cultural Approach From a COVID World

Within the framework of a global political and sanitarian crisis that broke out in March 2020, this book proposes a new contemporary look at the great pandemic of the 20th century, the Spanish flu of 1918-1919. Based on its impact in Spain, the book offers a comparative and transatlantic perspective focused on the political and cultural impact of the pandemic in Europe and Latin America. The book focuses on three aspects: the overwhelming presence of influenza between 1918 and 1920, its oblivion and its political and cultural traces in the interwar decades and even more, and its reappearance in the face of the COVID-19. These three aspects are interconnected through a comparative analysis of the crisis of liberalism and democracy of the 1920s and 1930s and the current populist wave that is affecting the world. As such, this book is of great value to those interested in social and medical history across Europe and Latin America through offering a fresh outlook on the effects of the pandemic of the 20th century in the wake of the COVID pandemic that swept across the world. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of Figures and Tables 1 Introduction 2 Spain and the Impact of the 1918 Influenza: From the Great War to the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera 3 The Flu of 1918 Seen by Health Intellectuals in Spain 4 The 1918 Flu in Barcelona and Catalonia: Borders, Social Emergency and “Regionalist Fever” 5 The 1918–19 Pandemic in Portugal: Memory and Forgetting 6 The “Spanish” Flu: The Italian Case 7 Sick Latin America. Intellectual Interventions on Latin American Condemnations and Failures, 1898–1930 8 The Awareness of Death: Portraits and Literary Memories of the 1918 Flu 9 The Role of the Experts in the time of a Pandemic. The Case of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in Argentina 10 Fascism, Populism, and Disease. From the Traces of the 1918 Flu to COVID-19 Contributors Index