Galician Narrative: Xosé Neira Vilas, Carlos Casares, Alfredo Conde, Xavier Alcalá, and Victor F. Freixanes

Posted on Jan 14, 2025 in Arts and Humanities

Xosé Neira Vilas (1928)

Xosé Neira Vilas (1928): A non-manifesto of renovating NRTIs. His work concentrates on the tragedies of the Civil War and postwar times. His characters face conflicts with the established order, their oppressors, or similar figures. Four core narratives revolve around the world of rural life:

  • Memories of a Laborer
  • Letters to Weep
  • From Monk to Those Years

, not included in the volume The Loop. He offers a perception of the world from a rural perspective. The author reconstructs the rural habitat of the 1930s and 40s, marked by emigration. His rural narratives are observed from an adult’s viewpoint. Characters like Xent Rodicio, The Iron Woman, and others, show the alienation, superstition, and lack of solidarity of the peasantry. In the world of his narratives, emigration is a key theme:

  • The Bright Path
  • History of Emigrants
  • Whirlwind of Shadows
  • New Time

. These epics address the experience of emigrants in the Americas. His collections of lyrical sketches include:

  • Home
  • Mother
  • Bread

. These are a gallery of representative characters from the author’s narrative universe.

Narrative of the 1970s

Literary Context and Narrative Trends: Narrators who promoted the resurgence of Galician literature in the post-Franco era began their literary activity in the early 1970s. There was a strong homogeneity in the 70s, with an ideologically committed attitude. Literature became a testimony, revealing the signs of the people’s identity, related to the Civil War and the postwar period. The literary system adapted to the transition, with a momentum in publications in our language, the appearance of new publishing houses, and literary awards. Writers of the 1940s and early 50s evolved during the decade, moving from narrative techniques and social concerns to more complex structuralist formulations, combining formal experimentation. The narrative scene presents the following trends: rural and ethnographic realism, memorialist history, sociological realism, social and gender narrative, and innovative and experimental approaches.

The narrative view presented the following trends: rural and ethnographic realism, historical fiction memoirs, sociological realism, social allegorical narrative, gender, renovating and experimental.

Carlos Casares (1941-2002)

Carlos Casares (1941-2002): In the second stage of his narrative production, he abandoned the premises of the New Narrative, focusing on the historical past.

  • The Dark Dreams of Clio: Short stories set in various historical contexts of Galicia, with an ironic and humorous tone.
  • Grace: Revolves around the intransigent attitude of certain sectors of the Catholic curia, reaching the city of Ourense during the projection of a film.
  • The Dead of That Time: A judicial report on the circumstances surrounding the death of a pharmacist at the beginning of the Civil War.
  • God Sitting in a Blue Chair: A fictionalized portrait of Vicente Risco’s trajectory. The play is set in the immediate post-war environment of Ourense.
  • The Sun of the Sea: A posthumously published work, a love story set in the north.

Alfredo Conde (1945)

Alfredo Conde (1945): Stage of social realism:

  • Mementos of Living: Autobiographical narratives that recreate the figure of his grandfather and his childhood home.
  • Eat and Drink, That’s What the Shipmaster Does.

Beginning in the 1980s, he incorporated new narrative processes:

  • Memory of Noa: Through interior monologue, he designs the personality of a representative of the enlightened bourgeoisie.
  • Griffon, Now in the Wind: The narrative interweaves two levels: the stories of a writer and an inquisitor.

His characterized stage shows a vacillation between different themes:

  • Sacred Music
  • Semper Kill Me: A novel that revisits the theme of American emigration.
  • What is Easy to Kill, Maria of the Battles: The story of Maria Pita and the defense of A Coruña against the attack of Sir Francis Drake’s troops.

Xavier Alcalá (1947)

Xavier Alcalá (1947): Sociological Realism (a critical look at Galician reality):

  • Fable
  • Our Ashes: A chronicle of the adolescent initiation and youth of a son of the urban petty bourgeoisie in the 1950s.
  • Tertulia

Premises of the 1970s, with a playful idea of literature set in distant scenarios:

  • We Huinca Payments Loo: Addresses the issue of Galician emigration to the Argentine Pampa.
  • Green Prison. Havana Flash. Beyond Misfortune.

Victor F. Freixanes (1951)

Victor F. Freixanes (1951):

  • The Triangle Inscribed in the Circle: A literary world that creates its own allegorical transcript of Galicia, a dimension between reality and myth.

Works highlighting his baroque style, reinterpreting history:

  • The Veil’s Dowry
  • The City of the Caesars