Spanish Novel After the Civil War: Evolution & Trends

Posted on Mar 14, 2025 in Arts and Humanities

The Spanish Novel After the Civil War

Introduction: The Civil War deeply impacted Spanish literary evolution due to death, exile, and censorship. The Spanish novel of the 1940s sought to start anew. Critics identify four successive stages and five generations: the ’36, ’50, ’68, ’80, and ’90.

The Novel of the 1940s: Inside and Outside Spain

In Spain: Authors sought a starting point in the Spanish tradition, emphasizing realism, stark reality, lyricism, imagination, humor, poetry, and ethical considerations. They managed to bring the social dissent present in the atmosphere to the forefront, aiming to reflect problems affecting humanity. This existential approach consisted of:

  1. Introducing a bitter reality.
  2. Depicting distressed, marginalized, and uprooted characters.
  3. Minimizing social criticism.

Outside of Spain: Knowledge of their work was slow and delayed, resulting in a negligible literary impact. Novelists in exile reacted to the painful past and present by focusing on:

  1. Memories of childhood and adolescence.
  2. The tragic experience of war, its history, and consequences.
  3. The discovery of the American world.

The Social Novel of the 1950s

The resurgence of the novel from the 1940s was consolidated with the social novels of the 1950s. Two generations coexisted:

  1. The three most significant novelists of the previous generation: Camilo Jose Cela with The Hive, Miguel Delibes with The Road, and Ballester with The Joys and Shadows.
  2. A new generation of novelists appearing around 1945, including Rafael Sanchez Ferlosio with Jarama.

Features of the “generation of the half-century” include:

  1. Spanish society becoming the central theme of their narratives.
  2. Works predominantly featuring simple and concise linear narratives, copious descriptions, extensive dialogues, and popular speech.
  3. Objectivism as the most important aesthetic aspect.

The Spanish Novel from 1960

In the 1960s, we can identify two chronological stages marking a turning point in the new novel: from 1962 to 1975, and from 1975 onwards.

The depletion of the realistic formula is characterized by a renewal of most narratives, influenced by:

  1. The discovery of the Latin American novel.
  2. The influence of great innovators of the modern novel.
  3. The appearance of two works influenced by Joyce’s Ulysses.

Characteristics of the experimentation with new narrative formulas include:

  1. Rupture of the linear plot.
  2. Broken speech.
  3. Fragmented time and space.
  4. Polytonality in narrative.
  5. The new script aimed at an accomplice readership.

The Spanish Novel from 1975

The main trends in the novel from 1975 to the present are:

  1. Metanovel: A symbiosis between historical narrative and the process followed for its construction.
  2. Lyricism: Focusing on a more suggestive world, specifically with symbolic character and a tendency towards poetic language.
  3. Historical novels: Set in the past.
  4. Thrillers: Blending police elements with politics and history.
  5. Realistic approach: Attempting to recover the art of storytelling for the novel, with a wider and more open perspective.
  6. Culturalist Fiction: Young authors analyzing and explaining various aspects of Western culture.
  7. Another trend: Novels dealing with problems of urban youth, with aesthetics close to the counterculture.