The character created by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán debuted in 1972 with 'Yo maté a Kennedy'. It was a time when defeat was not yet an option for people like him.

Carvalho turns 50. The literary character would be over 80. “Yo mate a Kennedy” (1972), his first adventure, was published after two major works by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán: “Manifiesto Subnormal” (1970) and “Crónica sentimental de España” (1971). All three works are related. Stylistically and ideologically. They appear at a historical moment that oscillates between hope (“we had faith and the desire to win”, Mary Hopkin sang) and sentimental melancholy for what could have been and was not.

In this phase José Carvalho Tourón (in some volume José Carvalho Larios) was born literarily: a detective who had to be private because at this time in Spain the population mistrusted all those who worked in the service of the dictatorship. Carvalho, Vázquez Montalbán explained, is “a point of view”, a voyeur who tries to capture a reality purified by his own mystifications. Hence the change in narrative format that occurs between the first of the detective stories and the following ones.

Read more: El País