ABSTRACT
Faced with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, intellectuals, journalists, radio stations and newspapers from all over the world turned their eyes to 1918. Numerous books, magazines and newspapers reviewed the so-called “Spanish flu” looking for similarities with the new pandemic. The briefness of the 1918 epidemic posed great problems for historians. Despite its global relevance and the extensive knowledge available on its health, medical and epidemiological aspects, the analysis of its political and cultural impact is still very scarce. During the years immediately following the epidemic, it was close to 21.5 million deaths. In the 1990s, the figure rose to 30 million, still far from current estimates, which is now close to 100 million. The connections between the epidemic and the Great War continue to need much research. During the last decades, a considerable volume of studies has been developed on the 1918 flu that have dealt with studying its medical, epidemiological and demographic aspects.
