It is 1935 and Roberto Arlt writes from Morocco to his reading public in Argentina:" Aquí está Marruecos. El Marruecos que ustedes conocen, señores: El de la película de von Sternberg." Morocco is Paramount Pictures' success of the time, and with Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper in the main roles, the film was widely viewed in Arlt's native Argentina. After establishing a connection between the North African country and the popular 1930 Hollywood film, Arlt directs a question to his reading public across the Atlantic:"¿ Recuerdan ustedes esa calle donde cruzan los legionarios del film?[...] Está aquí, en Tetuán, en sus frescas siluetas vegetales y se llama la calle de los Tafirín"(Arlt 1981: 333). Arlt writes indeed from the Tafirín street in Tetuán, but Josef von Sternberg's Morocco was not shot on location. The picturesque street captured in one of the film's first images was actually shot at Paramount Studios in Imperial County, California. As Arlt indicates, this film largely informs the popular view of Morocco and of the Orient in 1930s Argentina. In fact, it is through the triangulation of imaginaries-those of Holly-wood, of Argentina, and of the author himself-that Arlt creates a travelogue that is later called Aguafuertes españolas.

As the information travels across the Atlantic, Arlt both follows these popular views and deviates from them while fulfilling his journalistic duties. In his Spanish and North African texts, written on a daily basis, he evokes both the voice of a journalist writing for the Buenos Aires daily El Mundo, and that of a storyteller writing short stories for the weekly El Mundo Argentino. Furthermore, the testimonial quality of parts of Arlt's Spanish and Moroccan writings, documenting the political turbulence throughout Spain and the rivalry of the colonial powers in North Africa, points to his 1935 role as witness. Due to the growing political tensions in Spain of 1935, Arlt was forced to return to Argentina shortly before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Once on the other side of the Atlantic in Buenos Aires, he subsequently published his travel writing in the collections titled Aguafuertes españolas and Aguafuertes gallegas. A section titled" Marruecos" figures prominently in Aguafuertes españolas. It is situated between travel accounts