where does the name spanish flu come from
1918 flu pandemic To maintain morale, wartime censors minimized early reports of illness and mortality in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States.[17][18] However, papers were free to report the epidemic's effects in neutral Spain (such as the grave illness of King Alfonso XIII).[19] This reporting dichotomy created a false impression of Spain as especially hard hit,[20] thereby giving rise to the pandemic's nickname, Spanish Flu.[21] In Spain, a different nickname was adopted, the Naples Soldier (Soldado de Nápoles), which came from a musical operetta (zarzuela) titled La canción del olvido (The Song of Forgetting), which premiered in Madrid during the first epidemic wave. Federico Romero, one of the librettists, quipped that the play's most popular musical number, Naples Soldier, was as catchy as the flu.[22]