Moroccan War in graphical Spanish magazine "La Unión Ilustrada". Between photojournalism and literary journalism

Abstract

The Spanish historiography has denominated as Moroccan War the conflict between Morocco and Spain, which by colonial reasons it was happened over the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. This last period coincided in Spain with many events of enormous importance for the future of the country: crisis of 1909, where the Tragic Week of Barcelona happened against civilians levy for war; the beginning of the Protectorate of Morocco; the crisis of 1917 and the political system of the Restoration; the defeat of the Spanish army in Annual, 1921; or the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, from 1923 to 1930. “La Unión Ilustrada” (The Enlightened union) born in Malaga in 1909 thanks of newspaper enterprise the “Unión mercantil” (Commercial union) and it was one of the most important Spanish graphic magazines. This magazine continued the legacy of “White and Black's” magazine, the most important magazine about journalism. Torcuato Luca de Tena founded “White and black” in 1891. “La Unión Ilustrada” was one of the first media that showed the War of Melilla, which confronted the Spanish army with the Moroccan rebels from July to December 1909. It was also one of the first Spanish publications to incorporate high-quality photographs to illustrate informational texts. Reporters took these photos in the middle of conflict. The conflict had an important role inside the magazine. The publication dedicated many room for explain what was happening in the Moroccan War. In these reports and chronicles could be seen a proof of literary or narrative journalism, which will be the object of our analysis. As Tom Wolfe asked in the 60s, is the New Journalism really new? Certainly, many of the texts that appear in “La Unión Ilustrada” could be classified as emerging examples of this type of journalism in Spain, although it is possible consider these texts like proto-journalistic. In any case, it is also an example of how “La Unión Ilustrada” understood the journalism.