quality:corruption, structural:reformatting
'Spanish' influenza

Outside Spain, the disease was soon misnamed 'Spanish influenza'. In a 2 June 1918 The Times of London dispatch titled, "The Spanish Epidemic," a correspondent in Madrid reported over 100,000 victims of, "The unknown disease…clearly of a gripal character," without referring to "Spanish influenza" directly. Three weeks later The Times reported that, "Everybody thinks of it as the 'Spanish' influenza to-day." Three days after that an advertisement appeared in The Times for Formamint tablets to prevent "Spanish influenza". When it reached Moscow, Pravda announced, " Ispánka (the Spanish lady) is in town," making 'the Spanish lady' another common name.

The outbreak did not originate in Spain (see below), but reporting did, due to wartime censorship in belligerent nations. Spain was a neutral country unconcerned with appearances of combat readiness, and without a wartime propaganda machine to prop up morale; so its newspapers freely reported epidemic effects, including King Alfonso XIII 's illness, making Spain the apparent locus of the epidemic. The censorship was so effective that Spain's health officials were unaware its neighboring countries were similarly affected.

In an October 1918 "Madrid Letter" to the Journal of the American Medical Association, a Spanish official protested, "we were surprised to learn that the disease was making ravages in other countries, and that people there were calling it the 'Spanish grip'. And wherefore Spanish? …this epidemic was not born in Spain, and this should be recorded as a historic vindication." But before this letter could be published, The Serbian Newspaper (Corfu) said, "Various countries have been assigning the origin of this imposing guest to each other for quite some time, and at one point in time they agreed to assign its origin to the kind and neutral Spain…"