When civil war broke out in Spain, the Surrealists unanimously sided with the Republicans, and Joan Miro's Reaper came face to face with Picasso's Guernica in the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 Universal Exhibition. Although Picasso was not an actual member of the Surrealist group, he was nevertheless close to Paul Eluard, André Breton and, of course, his muse and lover Dora Maar. Created in 1937, Max Ernst's L'Ange du foyer also appeared as an allegory of fascist barbarism. Under the impetus of André Breton, the publications ‘La Révolution surréaliste’ and ‘Surréalisme au service de la révolution’ took up positions denouncing the war and colonialism.

André Masson found himself in war-torn Spain, where he had lived with his family since 1934. He was forced to leave Catalonia in 1937 to take refuge in France. André Masson was to produce some of the most bitter satires of Franco's regime and of the political situation in Europe at the time. Le Thé chez Franco (Tea at Franco's) represents a specific historical moment, in reference to the Münich agreements of 1938, which ceded Czechoslovakia to Hitler. Signed between Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy and which opened the door to war, giving greater legitimacy to the Reich. Winston Churchill rightly put it: "They had to choose between dishonor and war. They chose dishonor, and they will have war".

The drawing was reproduced on the cover of the second issue of Clé, the bulletin of the International Federation of Independent Revolutionary Art (FIARI), created by André Breton and Léon Trotsky with the help of Diego Rivera.