Abstract

The article examines the impact of the Spanish Civil War as a foundational historical event for important Chilean politicians and intellectuals. It studies the repercussions of the civil war in the press and the cultural field of the thirties, and in the formation of the Chilean Popular Front, which triumphed in the presidential elections of 1938. Several books of memoirs –and other testimonial texts– published by Chilean authors in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have highlighted the importance of the conflict and established lines of continuity between the Spanish Republic and its defeat by Franco in 1939, and Salvador Allende’s government of Popular Unity, which would end tragically with the coup d’état of 1973.