Abstract

Since the mid-nineties onwards, the theme of the Civil War and Franco’s Dictatorship has generated in Spain an enormous number of novels, newspaper articles, historical research papers and audiovisual production that highlight the problematic relevance of the theme in the present time. This article focuses on one aspect of this production: those narrations that within Catalan literature have addressed it. It is an extensive body of works in which some of the most outstanding writers have been involved. Our approach aims to study this vast and diverse production, trying to figure out the motivations and narrative approaches that govern these proposals. We’ve discerned three basic models: the testimonial, the updater and the storyteller, and we have exemplified them with the works that we have considered the most representative. Likewise, we have identified a change regarding the model of representation of historical characters and events, which tends towards multiperspectivism and a more critical vision. This change is related to the public debate that the movement of recovery of historical memory has generated throughout Spain.

Abstract

Since the mid-nineties onwards, the theme of the Civil War and Franco’s Dictatorship has generated in Spain an enormous number of novels, newspaper articles, historical research papers and audiovisual production that highlight the problematic relevance of the theme in the present time. This article focuses on one aspect of this production: those narrations that within Catalan literature have addressed it. It is an extensive body of works in which some of the most outstanding writers have been involved. Our approach aims to study this vast and diverse production, trying to figure out the motivations and narrative approaches that govern these proposals. We’ve discerned three basic models: the testimonial, the updater and the storyteller, and we have exemplified them with the works that we have considered the most representative. Likewise, we have identified a change regarding the model of representation of historical characters and events, which tends towards multiperspectivism and a more critical vision. This change is related to the public debate that the movement of recovery of historical memory has generated throughout Spain.

Abstract

Modernity in Europe and America has negated the existence of Blacks, making them invisible. Spanish Renaissance and Baroque theater represents the Black figure in three ways. Some Black characters embody the negation of humanity; other Blacks attempt to erase their skin color at the physical and metaphysical level, and thus their presence in society as difference and as beings in history; lastly, and this is the exception, some are individuals who confront this negation and demand their freedom against a society that sees them only as slaves. This is the case of the play Juan Latino (c. 1625) by Diego Ximénez de Enciso. Its protagonist affirms his presence in historical memory.