AUTHOR: Manuel Longares
PUBLISHER: Galaxia Gutenberg
GENRE: Novel fiction
READER’S NAME: Tony Beckwith
DATE: May 31, 2022
Spain was deeply polarized during the 1930s. A socialist coalition of agricultural and urban workers and members of the educated middle class, assembled under a Republican banner, was pitted against the Nationalist group that included Catholics, the military, and the landowning and business classes. A democratically elected Republican government took office in early 1936. The Nationalists, under General Franco, revolted and a bloody civil war ensued. When the war ended three years later, the Nationalists had won, and Franco became the country’s dictator, ruling Spain with an iron fist until his death in 1975. After Franco died the country experienced a tense transition to a democratic form of government, under a figurehead, King Juan Carlos I. The socialists returned to power for a decade or so and then the center-right won the elections in 1996. Spain has been at peace since the return to democracy in 1975.
This story unfolds in Madrid’s snooty Salamanca neighborhood during that traumatic period in Spain’s history. It is a saga told in three parts. The first takes place during the weeks leading up to and following the dictator’s death, when the wealthy, well-connected denizens of Salamanca are either in total denial of the impending crisis or are starting to wonder what will happen next. “The Reds won’t steal my money!” one of them vows. The novel’s early action takes place in the luxury apartment of a young conservative couple, Pía and José Luis Arce. Manuel Longares introduces us to them and their servants and neighbors, explaining that “all those Salamanca families were rich by the grace of God and the benevolence of Franco.” The vivid descriptions of people and places—and the idiosyncrasies of the different social classes—are rich in detail. Longares has a sly, irreverent sense of humor that blends with his eloquent Castilian to create a mesmerizing narrative. He repeats the names of his characters and the businesses they patronize at every opportunity, conveying a sense of community where everyone knows everyone, and they all haunt the same shops and bars and tea rooms on Salamanca’s fashionable main street. Cloistered in their ivory tower, the only dealings most of these privileged people have with the “plebs” involve the men and women who wait on them in one way or another. As the reality of a post-Franco Spain begins to sink in, some of these elites think back to the atrocities of the civil war and wonder if the working-class “Reds” might be contemplating revenge.
In the second part, the characters start adapting to their new circumstances and emerging from the fog they have been wrapped in for the last forty years. José Luis, who doesn’t even know what fascism is, adapts more easily than Pía, who thinks everything is moving too fast. Through contact with newly up-and-coming Republicans, who are experiencing their own version of a post-Franco Spain, the sheltered “unproductive class” begins to question the strict codes and traditions of its heritage as it becomes exposed to progressive, democratic points of view. Pía is right, things are changing very fast. The family’s long-time cook retires, and they are unsure how to hire a replacement. A new friend, an enigmatic “Red” who was at school with José Luis long ago, finds one. She, too, is a “Red” and insists on a work schedule that would have been unthinkable while Franco was alive. His death broke the cocoon he had spun and sent Spaniards rocketing into the future, trying to catch up with ideas about life, religion, culture, and morality that Europe and the West had been exploring for decades while Spain was trapped in isolation behind the Pyrenees, cut off from the world by the dictator’s censorship and propaganda. Longares describes moments of fear and joy and anger, noting that a change of this magnitude generates all manner of repercussions, from terrorist attacks to breaks with social and sexual taboos.
The third part of the novel pivots to the people who experienced an entirely different sort of life under the repressive dictatorship, those who were not pampered and protected by the regime. Their relationship with the Salamanca set changes as Spain evolves and they begin taking their first steps toward a new political involvement in their country’s destiny.
Manuel Longares was born in Madrid in 1943. He has published a number of novels and story collections and translations. He is the recipient of several awards, including the National Critics Prize for Romanticismo, which was originally published in 2001. This novel would surely be well-received in the United States among those who are interested in recent Spanish history. In the event of a translation, most of those readers would appreciate a brief historical note, as in the opening paragraph of this review, to provide some context for the story.
