The Spanish Novel After the Civil War
Back to 1936 Narrative: The Civil War significantly impacted the evolution of Spanish literature for several reasons. Firstly, it led to the deaths of prominent figures in the 20th-century Spanish novel, such as Unamuno and Valle-Inclán. Secondly, it forced the exile of authors who had emerged in the 1930s, including Max Aub, Francisco Ayala, and Ramon J. Sender. Lastly, the new political climate and censorship hindered the progress of the social novel.
The Spanish novel in the 1940s had to essentially start anew. The post-1939 novel can be divided into three stages (post-war, social realism, and technical renovation) and encompasses several generations of writers.
The Post-War Novel (1939-1950)
Several types of novels emerged during this period:
- The Triumphalist Novel: This type of novel defended traditional values (God, country, family) and justified the Civil War and its consequences, placing blame on the losing side.
- Psychological Fiction: This focused on character analysis and behavior using traditional techniques. A notable author in this genre is Ignacio Agustí.
- Symbolic Fiction: In these novels, characters functioned as symbols of ideas or conflicts. José Antonio Zunzunegui is a significant author in this style.
- The Tremendismo: Camilo José Cela initiated this trend with The Family of Pascual Duarte in 1942. It is characterized by stark language and often depicts a rural world filled with tragic conflicts, featuring characters with base instincts and physical or mental defects, used to support moral positions. These novels reveal a sense of unease and bitterness, lending them a certain documentary value.
- The Existential Novel: This arguably began with Carmen Laforet’s Nada in 1945 and continued with Miguel Delibes’ The Shadow of the Cypress is Long (1948) and Gonzalo Torrente Ballester’s Javier Mariño. Thematically, these novels revolved around daily life, bitterness, loneliness, inadequacy, death, and frustration. The protagonists are often socially marginalized individuals. The causes of this bitterness are rooted in the realities of 1940s Spain, marked by poverty, ignorance, violence, political persecution, and lack of freedom. However, these novels generally avoid direct criticism or complaint. Technically, they are characterized by simplicity and traditionalism.
The Second Stage: Social Realism
Topics and Techniques
The 1950s saw a boom in the novel, with themes of poverty, persecution, and injustice taking center stage. This trend is known as social realism or the social novel.
The Social Novel
As a narrative subgenre, the social novel has specific formal and thematic constraints. The authors associated with it are often referred to as the “Generation of ’55” or the “Mid-Century Generation” and include Ignacio Aldecoa, Carmen Martín Gaite, and Jesús Fernández Santos, among others. From an ideological standpoint, it aims to bear witness to historical and social realities.
The Realistic Novel: A Critical Attitude
This is also called critical realism. The novelist does not passively accept reality but seeks to explain its underlying mechanisms, emphasizing and denouncing social issues.
Objectivist Focus
The novelist acts as an impartial observer of reality. From an explicitly moral and political position, this is sometimes referred to as socialist realism. This trend aims to reflect reality within its revolutionary process, reducing it to a confrontation between oppressor and oppressed.
Characteristics of the Social Novel
- Abandonment of formal and technical aspects: The focus is on content and plot.
- Simple narrative structure: It tends towards linear storytelling.
- Condensation of time and space: The settings are often singular, and the action unfolds within a short timeframe (e.g., Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio’s El Jarama (1956), which takes place over a few hours).
- Preference for collective characters: The individual protagonist is less prominent.
- Predominance of dialogue: In line with the objectivist approach, the narrator fades into the background, allowing the characters’ voices to directly manifest their behavior and thoughts. There is an effort to reflect the linguistic features of the social groups to which the characters belong.
- Pursuit of simplicity, clarity, and straightforward language: Simple sentences, colloquialisms, popular linguistic forms, and slang are common.
Main Themes of the Spanish Social Realism Novel
- The harshness of rural life (e.g., Miguel Delibes’ The Holy Innocents)
The Third Stage: A Time of Quiet Renewal
Martín Santos as a Benchmark
By the 1960s, social realism began to show signs of exhaustion, and a need for formal revolution emerged. Alongside these literary factors, socio-political changes played a role, including economic development and the 1966 Press Law, which relaxed some aspects of authoritarianism and allowed for greater cultural diffusion.
A landmark novel of this period is Luis Martín-Santos’ Time of Silence (1962). It explores themes of frustration, ambition, and the alienation of a young medical researcher. It reflects a broader national reality, and its formal qualities would become characteristic of the novels of this period: a subjective approach and characters who act as individuals, as opposed to the types or archetypes of the realist novel.
These techniques, to varying degrees, appeared in the works of novelists from different generations from 1966 until the end of Franco’s regime in 1975, including Juan Marsé’s Last Evenings with Teresa (1966), Miguel Delibes’ Five Hours with Mario (1966), Juan Goytisolo’s Marks of Identity (1966), and Juan Benet’s Return to Región (1967).