El Mono Azul
{{Short description|Cultural magazine in Spain (1936–1939)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2024}}
{{Infobox magazine
| image_file = El Mono Azul (8-7-1937). Publicación de la Alianza de Intelectuales Antifascistas para la defensa de la cultura.jpg
| image_size = 250px
| image_caption = Cover page dated 8 July 1937
| editor =
| editor_title =
| frequency = {{ubl|Weekly | Irregular}}
| circulation =
| category = Cultural magazine
| company =
| publisher =
| founder = {{ubl|Rafael Alberti|María Teresa León}}
| founded = 1936
| firstdate = 27 August 1936
| finaldate = February 1939
| country = Spain
| based = Madrid
| language = Spanish
| issn =
| oclc =
}}
El Mono Azul ({{langx|es|Blue Overalls}}) was an anti-fascist magazine which was published in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War. The magazine existed between 1936 and 1939 and was one of the major cultural, intellectual and artistic publications during the war with the subtitle hoja semanal de la Alianza de Intelectuales Antifascista para la Defensa de la Cultura ({{langx|es|Weekly publication of the Alliance of Anti-fascist Intellectuals for the Defense of Culture}}).
History and profile
El Mono Azul was founded in Madrid in 1936 by the Alliance of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals led by communist writers Rafael Alberti and María Teresa León at the beginning of the Civil War.{{cite web|title=Título: El Mono azul|publisher=Hemeroteca Digital|url=http://hemerotecadigital.bne.es/details.vm?q=id:0003750150&lang=es|language=es|access-date=11 March 2022}}{{cite journal|author=Kirschenbaum, Lisa A. |title=The Russian Revolution and Spanish Communists, 1931–5|journal=Journal of Contemporary History|year=2017|volume=52|issue=4|page=895|doi=10.1177/0022009417723974|s2cid=159939003 }}{{cite journal|author=Olivar, Jordi |title=This Is Their Fight: Joris Ivens's The Spanish Earth and the Romantic Gaze|journal=Forma. Revista d'Estudis Comparatius. Art, literatura, pensament|year=2014|issue=10|page=62|url=http://www.raco.cat/index.php/Forma/article/view/286004}} The Alliance was part of the Republican side of the groups fighting in the civil war.{{cite book|author1=Gesser, Silvina Schammah
|author2=Alexandra Cheveleva Dergacheva|editor1=Raanan Rein|editor2=Joan Maria Thomás|title=Spain 1936: Year Zero|year=2018|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=M5vHugEACAAJ|page=194|publisher=Sussex Academic Press|location=Brighton|isbn=978-1845198923|chapter=An Engagé in Spain: Commitment and Its Downside in Rafael Alberti's Philo-Sovietism}} El Mono Azul functioned as the propaganda organ for the group.
The first issue of El Mono Azul appeared on 27 August 1936,{{cite thesis|author=Gant, John Eric |title="El mono azul" (1936-1939) and Spain's Civil War poetry|year=1993|degree=PhD|pages=16–22|id={{ProQuest|304044818}}|url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/304044818
|location=University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill}}{{cite book|editor=Nelson, Cary |author-link=Cary Nelson|title=The Wound and the Dream: Sixty Years of American Poems about the Spanish Civil War|page=24|publisher=University of Illinois Press|year=2002|isbn=978-0-252-07070-9|chapter=Introduction|location=Urbana; Chicago|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NMbZYcqbCs8C&pg=PR24}} a month after the start of the civil war.{{cite journal|author=Lambie, George |title=Intellectuals, Ideology and Revolution: The Political Ideas of César Vallejo|journal=Hispanic Research Journal|year=2000|volume=1|issue=2|page=159|doi=10.1179/hrj.2000.1.2.139|s2cid=154672054}} From its start to November 1936 the magazine was published every Thursday on a weekly basis. In the period December 1936–February 1937 El Mono Azul temporarily ceased publication and was restarted on 11 February. It became a section of the weekly newspaper La Voz in June 1937 and continued its publication in this format until May 1938. It then produced three more issues, the last of which appeared in February 1939. The final issue was an independent publication published as part of a literary magazine called Cuadernos de Madrid.
=Content and editors=
El Mono Azul was directed at those fighting in the civil war and frequently featured articles with tips for the proficiency in precision shooting and hygiene. In addition, the magazine covered literary genres such as poetry and literary criticism, political articles, editorials, documents, theatrical news, photographs or illustrations, the latter mostly by Alberti and Pablo Picasso. The poems published in El Mono Azul were read and written in the trenches before appearing in the magazine.{{cite journal|author=Herrmann, Gina |title=Nostralgia: María Teresa León, Rafael Alberti, and the Memory of Absence|journal=Revista Hispánica Moderna|date=December 2001|volume=54|issue=2|page=329|jstor=30207965
|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30207965}} The 29th issue dated 19 August 1937 featured four poems by Langston Hughes translated into Spanish by Rafael Alberti.{{cite journal|author=Guijarro González, Juan Ignacio |title="I looked upon the Nile"—and the Ebro: Reconstructing the History of Langston Hughes Translations in Spain (1930–1975)|journal=The Langston Hughes Review|date=September 2021
|volume=27|issue=2|pages=144–145|doi=10.5325/langhughrevi.27.2.0137|s2cid=240529722 }} Hughes, an African American, was the only Anglophone poet whose works were published in El Mono Azul.
Directors and contributors included José Bergamín, Rafael Dieste, Lorenzo Varela, Miguel Hernández, Vicente Aleixandre, Vicente Huidobro, Luis Cernuda, Antonio Machado, Eduardo Ugarte, León Felipe, Rosa Chacel, Emilio Prados, Octavio Paz, César Vallejo, Tomás Navarro Tomás, Pablo Neruda, and Ramón J. Sender.
References
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{{Authority control}}
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Category:1936 establishments in Spain
Category:1939 disestablishments in Spain
Category:Anti-fascism in Spain
Category:Defunct communist magazines
Category:Defunct literary magazines published in Europe
Category:Defunct political magazines published in Spain
Category:Defunct Spanish-language magazines
Category:Irregularly published magazines
Category:Literary magazines published in Spain
Category:Magazines established in 1936
Category:Magazines disestablished in 1939
Category:Magazines published in Madrid
Category:Poetry literary magazines