Post-War Spanish Novel: Evolution and Trends
Overview of the Post-War Spanish Novel
The post-war Spanish novel began with the loss of numerous literary references due to various factors:
- The deaths of writers like Unamuno and Valle-Inclán.
- The exile of others such as Sender, Aub, and Ayala.
- Censorship and the inability to import texts from foreign authors who supported the Republic (e.g., Malraux, Dos Passos, Hemingway, and Greene).
Additionally, works from earlier decades that introduced narrative innovations, such as those by Joyce, Faulkner, and Proust, soon became less accessible.
Rebuilding a Novelistic Tradition
After the Spanish Civil War, narrators had to create a new novelistic tradition. This involved a return to the models of realistic fiction employed by authors like Galdós and Baroja. There was a significant break with the avant-garde and experimental trends that had begun in the pre-war decades.
Content and Themes in the Post-War Novel
In the post-war novel, an attitude of commitment to reality emerged. This meant that principles considered valid by the victors of the Civil War were often reflected in the literature. However, there was also an attitude of protest in some works. In other cases, novels did not express an overt ideological commitment, but the stories told were imbued with an individual climate of oppression that reflected the anguish of the characters in a society that offered few solutions.
The Impact of Censorship
Censorship was a pervasive force in the immediate post-war period and throughout the 1950s. This resulted in a novelistic content that often focused on social criticism of the prevailing regime.
Narrative Innovation in the 1960s
By the 1960s, content was no longer the sole focus, and authors began to pay more attention to how stories were told. Technical innovation, sometimes taken to the extreme of experimentation, characterized the novel of that decade and the beginning of the 1970s. This change was consistent with the new reality of Spain at that time, which experienced greater cultural openness and access to the major contributions of the 20th-century Western novel. The disillusionment of many authors regarding the potential role of the novel in the social landscape also contributed to this shift in attitude.
Different Orientations of the Spanish Novel from the Post-War Period to the Present
The 1940s
This decade saw a break with the past, with several trends coexisting:
- Nationalist novel
- Traditional realism
- Novel of existentialist anguish
- Humorous and fantastic trends
The 1950s
Techniques of U.S. objectivism were incorporated, and the predominant orientation was the social novel.
The 1960s
Narrative innovations of the 20th century and the influence of Latin American novels were felt in the experimental novel of the sixties.
The 1970s Onwards
The novel of this period moved away from common features and was characterized by a variety of models and the multiplicity of themes.
The Experimental Novel of the Late 1960s and 1970s
From the late 1960s, a trend known as experimental emerged, driven by a new generation of writers who showed a complete rejection of traditional storytelling. This trend is associated with authors like José María Guelbenzu, Félix de Azúa, Juan Cruz, and Juan Eslava Galán.
Juan Benet (1927-1993) deserves special mention. With his unique approach, he initiated a type of novel based on the development of language and thought. His works include Volverás a Región (1968), Una meditación (1970), Saúl ante Samuel (1980), El aire de un crimen (1980), and Herrumbrosas lanzas (1983).
From the 1970s onwards, the Spanish novel was characterized by the coexistence of past trends and styles. Common features included a renewed interest in history and stylistic variety. Having exhausted the path of experimentation, new authors returned to telling stories and incorporated the positive contributions of previous decades.
Variety of Topics
The topics covered a wide spectrum, ranging from realism to ethical concerns, historical reconstruction, and pure fantasy. Both social and historical or political events were addressed, as well as daily life and individual conflicts.
The presence of the people, in terms of social and emotional aspects, and sometimes idyllic, is present, for example, in the narrative of Julio Llamazares (La lluvia amarilla, 1988). In the novels of Luis Mateo Díez (Las estaciones provinciales, 1982; La fuente de la edad, 1986; Camino de perdición, 1995), a provincial world that shapes the characters appears.
The Civil War and its aftermath continued to act as a backdrop even for generations who did not experience it directly. This era is the setting for Luna de lobos (1985) by Julio Llamazares; El pianista (1985) by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán; and El lápiz del carpintero (1998) by Manuel Rivas.
Literature within Literature
Literary creation became a subject matter, with writers reflecting on or discussing their own novels. The text was thus transformed into a meta-novel. Some examples are Novela de Andrés Choz (1976) by José María Merino; El hijo adoptivo (1984) by Álvaro Pombo; or Beatus Ille (1986) by Antonio Muñoz Molina.
Detective Fiction
The detective or thriller genre combined the tendency to tell an engaging story with social commentary and denunciation. It sometimes reconstructed historical moments in which serious conflicts occurred and recounted events following the thread of an intrigue.
In Spain, this model emerged with La verdad sobre el caso Savolta (1975) by Eduardo Mendoza, which recreates Barcelona at the turn of the century and the conflicts of the Tragic Week. Mendoza continued in this vein with El misterio de la cripta embrujada (1979), El laberinto de las aceitunas (1982), and La aventura de las mujeres dementes (2001), in which a mentally ill person investigates police cases.
The Historical Novel
Influenced by The Name of the Rose (1980) by Umberto Eco, an important trend in recent decades has been the recreation of historical events. This trend includes works like Mansura (1984) by Félix de Azúa; En busca del unicornio (1987) by Juan Eslava Galán; Urraca (1991) by Lourdes Ortiz; and El hereje (1998) by Miguel Delibes.
Javier Marías
Javier Marías’s narrative began under the influence of mass culture, film, and the novel. In his first book, Los dominios del lobo (1971), he recreates the image of America broadcast by the media. From his second novel, Travesía del horizonte (1972), the mark of intrigue appears, pulling the strings of history, mystery, and imagined or experienced adventure, coupled with a frequent use of journeys.
Marías commonly uses a protagonist-narrator who narrates in the first person, and a mix of narration and reflection, which allows him to establish a play between past, present, and future, where these three stages seem to repeat the same situations with similar characters.
In Todas las almas (1989), a professor’s memories of his years at Oxford are presented. Corazón tan blanco (1992) presents the author’s most characteristic themes: chance as an instrument of destiny played with individuals in a world marked by death, love, friendships, betrayals, and loyalties. In Negra espalda del tiempo (1997), Javier Marías explores how an event becomes fictional, no longer existing for its own sake, but for the vision of the narrator. In this way, literature becomes more convincing than reality.
Antonio Muñoz Molina
In all of Muñoz Molina’s novels, the interest in the story being told is essential. They usually highlight the value of memory as a way of recovering a life that has not been lost and the presence of an intrigue that functions as the structuring axis of the narrative.
In his first novel, Beatus Ille (1986), Muñoz Molina develops the reconstruction of a time related to the Civil War by a student who goes to his family’s village to investigate the past. El jinete polaco (1991) returns to the world of childhood and adolescence, with its places, characters, and experiences. In El invierno en Lisboa (1987) and Beltenebros (1989), the plot revolves around a love story intertwined with elements of intrigue and suspense. The plot of Plenilunio (1997) revolves around the murder of a girl in the 1950s.
The 1950s Novel
The 1950s novel continued the tradition of realism of the 1940s, and its characteristics persisted until the early 1960s. Technically, this narrative was born under the influence of La colmena and the reading of American and French authors.
In these years of profound social change, literature aimed to fulfill the function of informing the reader about what did not appear in the media and to raise awareness. Although political, religious, and sexual censorship remained in force, the authors of the 1950s raised an ethical commitment to reality and, therefore, attempted to reflect the Spanish situation of the time in their novels:
- The alienation of workers, whose leisure time, when it existed, was reduced to a minimum.
- The frivolity of the upper classes, lacking in social consciousness, who were bored and tried to distract themselves with parties and temporary relationships.
In this novel, the focus was not on individual characters and their personal problems, but rather on collective experiences. To focus the story, the plot was reduced and limited in time and space.
Trends in Social Narratives of the 1950s
Social narrators understood literature as a way of raising public awareness and influencing their ideological stance. This meant that, in many cases, the stories fell into Manichaeism: the workers were presented as exploited, living in subhuman conditions and resigned to their fate but, nevertheless, capable of being kind; the bourgeoisie, by contrast, were selfish and cruel beings, often idle, alienated in a world without illusions and full of pettiness.
The issue of migration to the city is present in different works from different perspectives. In Piquette by Antonio Ferres, the story focuses on the shantytown, the only refuge for Andalusian emigrants, which will be demolished. Work and new injustices are the themes in other stories: the miners of La mina by López Salinas or the power plant workers of Central eléctrica by López Pacheco. La zanja by Alfonso Grosso deals with the harsh working conditions in the construction of the Madrid metro.
Neorealist Trends
For the authors of the ethical commitment, writing also implied a personal attitude. Neorealist writers felt that this also involved the individual’s personal experiences, which allowed them to show another aspect of the world through topics such as loneliness, frustration, or disappointment.
The narrative of many of these novels followed the paths of behaviorism in North America, with techniques based on dialogue and the point of view of the film camera, which allowed for greater distancing of the narrator from the story being told.