The sound of the landmine that killed Robert Capa in Vietnam on May 25, 1954 still reverberates in the Madrid neighborhood of Entrevías, in the southeastern district of Puente de Vallecas. Although many decades have elapsed since then, the residents of a crumbling building located there are familiar with the biography of the 20th-century Hungarian-American photojournalist who became famous for his coverage of wars, including the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39.
The bombing of Entrevías, in ‘The New York Times Magazine’
Juan Carlos Almazán’s passion for collecting photographs of the Spanish Civil War has made him search through online markets selling old newspapers and magazines. Thanks to this resident of Villarreal (Castellón), the movement #SalvaPeironcely10 found out that the photograph taken by Robert Capa in late 1936 in Entrevías was published in ‘The New York Times Magazine’ on January 24, 1937. The supplement ran a full feature by William P. Carney on the air raids on the Spanish capital, under the headline ‘Life in Madrid: A City of Stalking Death.’ The story carried several pictures, including the one of the children on Peironcely street. Almazán recently located a copy of the magazine and bought it for €50 from a US citizen. In the Spanish market, he says in a telephone conversation, it would have cost a lot more. ‘The New York Times’ (where subscribers can access the story through its digital archive TimesMachine) was not the first international publication to run the picture, however. It had already appeared in the French magazine ‘Regards’ and in the Swiss ‘Zürcher Illustrierte.’