Excelsior was originally a popular movie magazine that published in Milan and Madrid from 1927 to 1937. This was a special issue, out of the usual film star cover mold, from 1937 about the victimization of the Spanish people by the left wing Republican “radical” with whom the Communists fought against the Fascists. This issue attacked the the enemy for a litany of atrocities — murders, torture, massacres and other violence and celebrated the same crimes carried out by Franco’s Fascists on the left wing Republicans and innocent Spanish citizens. The headline “The Last Yearnings of Red Madness” was atypical for this Italian paper, as was the incredibly large broadsheet scale. Note the lurid use of the red on the sepia rotogravure. It was stunningly designed a salute from the Italian Fascist press to its ally Fascist movement in its suppression of freedom.
