This toned gelatin silver print of an unknown woman includes hand-drawn lettering on upper left and lower right margins: ESPANA 1937. The only reference to this title through web research would seem to be a documentary film:  Spain 1937 — Loyal Spain in Arms by the important Spanish and Mexican filmmaker Luis Buñuel.

The work was acquired by this archive along with a 1934 studio photograph of American evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson by Max Autrey of Hollywood, CA. Any thoughts or insight are appreciated.

Spain 1937 — Loyal Spain in Arms — is a documentary about the Spanish Civil War that the Government of the Republic commissioned from Luis Buñuel . Directed by Jean-Paul Le Chanois with a script by Buñuel, it was produced by the Alliance of Antifascist Intellectuals between 1936 and 1937, and only the French copy survives.

History: This film has sometimes been confused with Espagne 1936 which, also directed by Le Chanois and supervised by Buñuel, was filmed and edited between 1936 and early 1937, being screened for the first time on April 6, 1937.  According to Román Gubern there are great aesthetic and narrative similarities between the two films, since both had been promoted by the Undersecretariat of Propaganda of the Spanish Republic that Luis Buñuel directed from the Spanish Embassy in Paris. However, some differences are notable between the two films, due in part to the evolution of the war. Therefore, according to Marien Gómez Rogriguez, España 1936 contains passages of great poetic charge, including a moving ending denouncing the atrocity of war with dead children.  In contrast to ” Spain 1937 “, which does not contain such emotional images and insists on the possibility of military victory. As the war progressed with power struggles and weakness among the Republican forces, the documentary aimed to raise the morale of the troops, advocating international solidarity in favor of the Republicans. -Wikipedia (2025) continues