A sangre y fuego : Héroes, bestias y mártires de España

Manuel Chaves Nogales wrote "A sangre y fuego" (Blood and Fire) in 1937 from his French exile, having become convinced that no justice or progress could come after a conflict that in just one year had brutalized Spanish society, both victim and perpetrator of the most extreme violence. The accounts that make up the work constitute one of the most harrowing testimonies that have come down to us, but perhaps also the most original, not only for its brilliant prose, but because its author, who knew no other affiliation than that of being (in his own words) a "liberal petty bourgeois," pledged his allegiance to neither side. As Andrés Trapiello states: "Chaves, who as a journalist knew the value of evidence at the crime scene, hastened to leave us his testimony before anyone could eliminate or manipulate it. His merit was in noticing and denouncing, before anyone else, the similarity of the terror, which was the same on both sides."