A Spanish amateur historian Polikarpo Sanchez discovered the press identity card, which allowed the French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint - Exupéry to cover events of the civil war in Spain that took place in 1936-1939 , reports  Rosbalt. The document was issued on April 16 of 1937 . At that time the writer was 36 years old. 52 -year-old lawyer Polikarpo Sanchez found the certificate among other documents in a small village in the province of Doledoy, when doing research for a cinema dedicated to the civil war. To receive permission for carrying out journalistic activities Saint - Exupéry left the address of the Hotel Florida, where stopped a lot of writers, such as Ernest Hemingway, who had come to Spain to see the war.

Saint - Exupéry Barcelona was covering the military operations for a French newspaper L'Intransigeant , and then for the `Paris-Soir . The writer disappeared when flying over the Mediterranean Sea in 1944 , shortly after the publication of The Little Prince . His body has  never been found.