Existentialism and Social Commentary in Spanish Novels

Typical of this novel is the bitter reflection of everyday life from an existential approach. The major themes are loneliness, inadequacy, frustration, and death. There are many marginal and displaced characters.

Delibes spoke of sadness and frustration in his first novel, Shadow of the Cypress is Long. Narrators of exile developed their work, varying from traditional realism to modernism. In their works, they mainly addressed issues of social content and recovery of Spanish reality.

The novel of the 50s continued the tradition of realism of the forties, and their characteristics are maintained until the early sixties. Although political, religious, and sexual censorship remained in force, the authors of the 50s raised an ethical commitment to reality. Therefore, their novels attempted to reflect the prevailing situation in Spain at the time: poverty, alienation, and frivolity of the upper classes.

This novel is not interested in individual character and personal problems, but there was a tendency to collective ownership. An example is found in The Hive by Cela. The way to take the ethical commitment of the writers of the 50s allows us to distinguish two currents within the so-called middle generation. The first of these is called the social trend.

Social Trend vs. Neorealism

Social narrators understand literature as a way to educate the public and highlight their ideological position as authors. We can include Juan Goytisolo and his work Hands, Games. The other trend is the neorealist. Neorealist writers felt that reality also involves the personal experiences of the individual. We highlight Ignacio Aldecoa, Her Light and Blood.

In the decade of the 60s, three plays clearly show the new routes of the Spanish narrative: Time of Silence by Luis Martin Santos, Identity Signs by Goytisolo, and Five Hours with Mario by Delibes. The authors of the sixties introduced narrative developments, retaking the findings of the European and American novel of the century. These novels are characterized by the loss of relief of the story: narrative perspective: the narrator intervenes and complains, using, at times, satire and parody. Different perspectives are included on a single echo. This leads to perspectivism.