20th-Century Spanish Novel: From Modernism to Experimentation
Novel Before 1936
The twentieth century began in Spain with a broad movement of artistic and cultural renewal, marked by two significant moments: the Generation of 1898 (Miguel de Unamuno, Azorín, Ramón María del Valle-Inclán, Pío Baroja) and the Generation of 1914. This shift particularly impacted fiction, encouraging new formulas like the psychological and lyrical novel, emphasizing subjectivity.
Writers of this period showed less interest in traditional chronological narratives, despite the success of narrators who adhered to classical storytelling for entertainment (e.g., Blasco Ibáñez, Chuck Palahniuk). The traditional story was broken through various innovative structural and stylistic procedures: multiple viewpoints, intellectual digressions, linguistic richness revealing the narrator, and symbolism. The Generation of 1914 continued this renovation, seeking balance between realism and experimentalism, resulting in novels that appealed to a broad audience while maintaining aesthetic standards, all without abandoning the strong social reformist concerns of the time.
The cultural climate for the young novelists of 1927 was characterized by an anti-realist attitude and experimental efforts. This new narrative was showcased in the series Novorum Nova Revista de Occidente, featuring metaphorical language from poetry, fragmentation from visual arts, and dynamic vision from film. The narrative was freed from dependence on history, breaking with linear time and embracing humor and irony.
The narrative of 1927 can be categorized into two main aspects: the intellectual lyrical novel and the humorous novel. However, critics have often overlooked the importance of this group of writers, who were in harmony with contemporary European trends.
Despite the social narrative impact of the Avant-garde, between the late 1920s and 1935, a generation of narrators emerged who, in contrast to dehumanized art, cultivated a realistic novel with a social purpose. This generation aimed to rehabilitate the human, emphasizing the evidential value and moral and political significance of literature. Key figures in this evolution include José Díaz Fernández, Joaquín Arderíus, Ramón J. Sender, and César Arconada.
Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936)
Unamuno’s work expresses deep experiences arising from his ideas. His writing challenges the reader to discover conflict. For him, life is struggle and doubt. Unamuno focuses on Spain, its language, and history, delving into the collective soul and seeking the individual within it (intrahistoria).
Narrative Work:
His characters embody thought and revitalization alongside actions, reduced to essential elements to highlight the conflict. His style is characterized by lively and passionate language.
Major Works:
- Peace in War: Focuses on the Carlist War, contrasting the surface “story” with the underlying “intra-history.”
- Love and Pedagogy: Satirizes the futility of planning a child’s genius.
- Mist: Explores reality, unreality, isolation, and passion through Augusto Pérez’s deception.
- Saint Manuel Bueno, Martyr: A meditation on life’s meaning through the tragic choice between truth and falsehood.
Ramón María del Valle-Inclán (1866-1936)
Valle-Inclán’s work evolved from early Carlism to mature socialism. He began with modernist and symbolist aesthetics, later developing the esperpento style influenced by expressionism. He manipulated reality through idealization or caricature.
Narrative Work:
His Sonatas reached a peak of modernism with lyrical language, exotic themes, and aristocratic settings. He also wrote about the Carlist War. His grotesque phase includes:
- Tirano Banderas: Denounces social and political injustice in Latin America.
- The Iberian Circle: Satirizes the court of Elizabeth II through distorted characters and atmosphere.
Pío Baroja (1872-1956)
Influenced by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, Baroja’s works convey existential pessimism, skepticism, and a bitter tone. His characters are often confused and unsuccessful. He advocated for an open, improvised novel guided by intuition. His style is spontaneous, using short sentences, concise descriptions, and lively dialogues.
Narrative Work:
He wrote over 70 works, mostly grouped into trilogies like Race, Basque Land, and The Struggle for Life. His major work, The Tree of Science, is a philosophical and autobiographical novel.
José Martínez Ruiz “Azorín” (1873-1967)
Azorín prioritized contemplation and landscape description over action. He was a great essayist, but his narrative works reflect spiritual apathy and minimal action. Notable works include The Will and Don Juan.
Noucentisme or Generation of 14
Characterized by writers with university educations who sought well-crafted work. A detachment from sentiment led to a dehumanizing trend. The thinking self gained importance, exemplified by Ortega y Gasset. These works were intended for an elite minority.
- Gabriel Miró: His style resembled Azorín’s, focusing on feelings and images with rich plasticity. His works include Our Father San Daniel and The Leprous Bishop’s Cemetery.
- Ramón Pérez de Ayala: Intellectual and critical, his early works were close to the Generation of ’98, later exploring philosophical themes in works like Belarmino and Apolonio and Honeymoon, Bitter Moon.
Ramón Gómez de la Serna
Gómez de la Serna broke with conventions and was a constant source of inspiration. He focused on the greguería, defined as: Humor + Metaphor = Greguería. His famous works include The Bullfighter Caracho and Automoribundia.
Novel of the Generation of 27
Situated between modernism and social realism, the novelists of this generation were less prominent than their poet counterparts. Ramón J. Sender stands out with his work Requiem for a Spanish Peasant.
Novel After 1936
This period spans from 1939, the end of the Spanish Civil War, to 1975, the end of the Franco regime and the beginning of democracy. The novel initially reflected the victors’ ideological vision, particularly that of the Falange, and the assertion of certain fundamental values. However, the initial warmongering excitement gradually gave way to disappointment, reflecting the political situation of the first postwar decade. Hunger was a reality, and totalitarianism characterized the government through provisions that preserved and managed Spain’s political and religious orthodoxy.
The family, supported by religion, provided the individual with a basic framework for life. Spain emerged from the war deeply shattered. The tragedy resulted in a violent rupture in the cultural landscape, disrupting previous flows. This break with tradition explains the disorientation of the immediate postwar years, as writers searched for ways to create literature appropriate to the new conditions.
Different trends emerged in Spanish narrative during this period, both in themes and techniques. However, some aspects were common to most writers:
- Exile of many writers, including Ramón Pérez de Ayala, Rosa Chacel, Max Aub, and Ramón J. Sender. These novelists belonged to the pre-war generation.
- Censorship operated in a double sense: prohibiting the dissemination of certain works and provoking self-censorship. However, it also fostered creative literary production.
- The presence of the Civil War theme. Novelists evoked this event implicitly or explicitly, either as direct experience, memory, or a cause of the writer’s situation.
- Rupture and discontinuity with the pre-war narrative tradition. The intellectual and dehumanized pre-war novel, detached from historical events, was inadequate for the new social reality.
- The search for previous models in American, French, or Italian literature, or in the tradition of Spanish realist literature. Young writers connected with the picaresque novel and the nineteenth-century realist novel.
Socio-historical Context
- The war marked a break with literary production. Writers went into exile or suffered censorship.
- Isolation in the early years.
- Seventies: entry into the UN. Last years of Franco, stabilization plan, economic change.
- 1975: Establishment of a parliamentary monarchy: political normalization, economic growth, and international presence.
The Novel After 1936
The postwar renewal began in 1942 with the publication of The Family of Pascual Duarte by Camilo José Cela. The novel followed four main directions:
- 1942-1954: Existential novel of realism. Focus on the character’s consciousness and daily misery.
- 1954-1962: Novel of social realism. Social content.
- 1962-1975: Experimental novel. Renewal of narrative techniques and language.
- 1975-present: Modern novel. Retrieves the importance of storytelling.
Existential Realism
This trend combined current issues and realistic techniques with the intention of renewal. It presented the harsh realities of life, reminiscent of realism. Characters were marked by determinism. Notable works include The Family of Pascual Duarte (Cela, 1942), Nada (Carmen Laforet, 1945), and The Shadow of the Cypress is Elongated (Delibes, 1947). Cela and Delibes are considered pillars of the existentialist novel.
Camilo José Cela (1916-2002)
Major Works:
- The Family of Pascual Duarte (1942): Marked a shift in Spanish narrative.
- The Hive: Marked the birth of social realism, portraying everyday reality after the war through interconnected stories.
- San Camilo, 1936: Began his path towards experimentalism, recreating the atmosphere of Madrid on July 18, 1936.
- Christ Versus Arizona: Further developed earlier themes of death and sex, lacking punctuation and consisting of numbered fragments.
- Mazurka for Two Dead (1983): Recovered narrative, exploring themes of barbarism and cruelty.
Style: Simple syntax, accurate metaphors and comparisons, lexical richness, rhythmic effects, caricatured and/or bitter humor.
Miguel Delibes (1920-2010)
Delibes demonstrated constant aesthetic and artistic progress, adapting to various literary trends.
Major Works:
- The Shadow of the Cypress is Elongated (1947): Realistic writing and existential concerns, showcasing his refined style and simple plot.
- The Road (1950): A novel of learning, reflecting on childhood, loss, and estrangement from nature.
- Rats and Red Leaf: Social novels, the former a complaint against misery and the latter criticizing lack of solidarity.
- Five Hours with Mario (1966): Experimental novel presenting a stark view of ideology and lack of communication through a woman’s monologue.
- The Holy Innocents: Complaint against the misery of rural life.
Delibes was an observer of colloquial speech, perfecting his style in the service of consistent themes: preoccupation with death, the ideal of justice, and the defense of integration between man and nature.
Social Realism (1954-1962)
The 1950s saw social content in realistic narratives renewed with techniques like: recovery of dialogue, hidden narrators presenting facts and characters, and structuring the text through strings. From the 1950s, a triple pattern evolved:
- Spokesman of injustices.
- Demands for social change.
- Objective presentation of war memories.
Notable works include The Brave (1954) by Jesús Fernández Santos and Jarama (1956) by Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio. Writers of this period, besides Cela and Delibes, include Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, Ignacio Aldecoa, Ana María Matute, Carmen Martín Gaite, Juan Goytisolo, Josefina R. Aldecoa, Juan Marsé, and Alonso Grosso, who considered the novel a weapon for social change.
Narrative Renewal (1962-1975)
The search for new narrative forms, the relaxation of censorship, and the publication of Time of Silence (1962) by Luis Martín Santos marked a change in the Spanish novel. Innovative techniques included:
- Simultaneous narration of deferred actions, interspersed with fragments.
- Multiple perspectives on reality.
- Stream of consciousness.
- Temporal disorder.
- Narrator’s interpretation of events.
- Activation of the author’s role in the work.
- Living language and colloquial speech.
This renewal was called structural realism. Other notable works include Marks of Identity (1966) by Juan Goytisolo and Last Evenings with Teresa (1966) by Juan Marsé. These works used parallel narratives, subjective and omniscient narrators, and the “you” of self-reflection alongside the third person. Five Hours with Mario (1966), Volverás a Región (1967) by Juan Benet, San Camilo, 1936 (1969) by Cela, and The Back Room (1974) by Carmen Martín Gaite also contributed to this trend. Hispanic American authors like Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, and Julio Cortázar influenced experimentalism in Spain, although Spanish authors used it in moderation. The Saga/Fugue of J.B. (1972) by Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, If They Tell You I Fell (1973) by Juan Marsé, and The Mandarin School (1974) by Miguel Espinosa featured creative experimentalism.
In this trend, the argument faded, focusing on language. Characters became voices that spoke, altering space and time. The resulting incomprehensible texts alienated some readers.
Current Novel (Since 1975)
Political and social changes favored literature after 1975. Censorship disappeared, and exiled writers returned, forming the Generation of 1975. Experimentalism was tempered, as seen in The Truth About the Savolta Case by Eduardo Mendoza. The essence of storytelling was recovered, incorporating traditional narrative procedures and simplifying narrative structure.
This period saw the recovery of plot, characters, and the use of first and second person narration. Dialogues became prominent, and political or ideological intentions were abandoned in favor of stylistic concerns. Novelists leaned towards realism but also introduced fantasy or subjective elements. Neorealist works emerged (from Delibes, Torrente Ballester, and Martín Gaite), alongside intrigue, historical, and technical novels.
Important contemporary works include: The South Seas by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, The Dark Side by José María Merino, Winter in Lisbon by Antonio Muñoz Molina, All Souls by Javier Marías, The Way of Bane and The Fountain of Age by Luis Mateo Díez, and The Mask of the Hero by Juan Manuel de Prada.