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.

Maximiliano Fuentes Codera is professor of Contemporary History in the University of Girona, Spain, where he leads the Chair Walter Benjamin, Memory and Exile. He has been visiting lecturer in several international universities. He is specialist in political and intellectual history in Europe and Spain in the 20th century. He has focused a significant part of his works on the impact of the First World War in Spain and Neutral Countries and the right-wing movements and Fascism in Europe. His latest books are Spain and Argentina in the First World War. Transnational Neutralities (Routledge, 2021) and Continental Transfers. Cultural and Political Exchanges among Spain, Italy and Argentina 1914-1945 (2022, edited with Patrizia Dogliani).