Taillot, Allison
Andrée Viollis and the defence of the Spanish Republic: information and commitment
- 2018.
19
This essay deals with the French journalist Andrée Viollis’s commitment to the Republican cause during the Spanish Civil War. Andrée Viollis (1870-1950) was a French journalist actively engaged in defending Spanish Republicans during the Civil War from 1936 to 1939, through her articles that were meant to both inform French public opinion and encourage them to take sides. As a special correspondent for the French papers Le Petit Parisien, Vendredi and Ce Soir, she went to the Republican-controlled zones no fewer than four times. The articles she wrote gave vivid accounts of the realities of war, on the front line and behind the lines, aimed at French readers. Her commitment to fight against fascism also drove her to try to use the intellectual networks she belonged to in order to help mobilize international public opinion. Thus she took part in the international relief effort by writing a preface to La Grande pitié des femmes et des enfants d’Espagne published by an international relief organisation in 1938, the Secours international aux femmes et aux enfants des républicains espagnols in 1938.