The paper focuses on analyzing the essays of I. Ehrenburg about Spain and examining the concept of "war" in his book "Spanish reports". The book, written in about ten years, during which the writer published several collections of essays: "Spain", "The tempering of Spain", is dedicated to Spain and the events of the civil war in this country. It also took many years for the book' s concept to emerge, which shows a peculiar evolution of the country' s perception: from the first traveler notes, glorifying the beauty of the Spanish land, including author's attention to people, their way of life, employment, character manifested in labor and friendship and expressed in combat - to comprehension of the profound philosophical meaning of ongoing military events. The writer is deeply concerned about the issues of war, life and death, man's recognition of his duty and its performance, saving one's face, awakening of people's national conscience, fate of the motherland. Under war conditions the issues sounded particularly acute and acquired a mature ontological meaning, showing fragility of the world on the eve of World War II. Designated range of issues has become a value center for comprehension of the life of the Spanish people, its history and war, presented in Ehrenburg's publications, constituting a semantic nucleus, defined by the term "concept" in modern science. According to S. A. Askoldov-Alekseev the latter is "a mental formation that replaces in the process of thought an indeterminate number of objects of the same kind". The writer's essays enable many meanings of the "war" concept to be clarified. Ehrenburg's articles, mainly based on the impressions of an eyewitness who fixed concrete facts, also contain a generalized view of modern history and retrospective interpretation of events. The writer's reports are a semantic complex, where dominant component of the war is expressed through many aspects, the totality of which constitutes its essence, called the "concept".
