Galician Narrative 1936-1976: Authors, Themes and Works

Galician Narrative Between 1936 and 1976

Between 1936 and 1976: a narrative of years of silence. In the 1950s and 1960s, the publishing houses Editoriais Abeiro and Galaxia in Monterrey gave rise to a narrative published in Galicia in the Galician language.

First Narrators of the Postwar Period

Between these years, the dominant narrative trends were:

• Social realism: recreating the life of the urban working classes and the environment of the poor.
• White fantastic love story: blending the real world with the fantastic and the mythical traditional worlds of Galicia.
• Other literary influences: Álvaro Cunqueiro and the short story, reworking popular tales in a cultured ambience.
• Popular narrative: Anxel Fole.

Eduardo Blanco

Love: a work of love in all the genres: narrative, poetry, essay and theater.

• A QueSmorga (1959): a novel written as testimony before a court of judges.
• Os Biosbardos (1962): accounts of children and adolescents.
• Xente lonxe ao (1972): a novel centered on a family history through the eyes of a working child.

Themes

Blanco's work represents one of the best examples of social realism. His commitment to social reality is reflected in works that give voice to the working classes (emigration, poverty, marginalization). His settings are mostly non-urban, giving prominence to the Ourense countryside, and his love for the Galician language is evident. He uses innovative formal elements such as perspectivism and temporal jumps, anticipating later writers. His language is rich and expressive, living alongside the speech of the street and of ordinary people.

Biography of Eduardo Blanco

Born in Vigo in 1979 and raised in Ourense, Blanco was influenced by the national figures of his native city. In 1919 he emigrated to Argentina, where he expanded his education. He was self-taught, worked as a journalist, and travelled several times to Spain, where he collaborated with Galleguist circles and maintained ties with Spanish literary figures such as Lorca. After the war he went into exile in America, but maintained an intense cultural connection with Galicia. In 1965 he returned to Galicia permanently.

Álvaro Cunqueiro

Cunqueiro was a leading poet and playwright. His narrative works include Merlín e familia (1959), Crónicas do Sochantre (1956), Os outros feirantes (1978), As illas sinbad (1961) and Escola de menciñeiros (1960). These novels blend characters from the Galician literary tradition with fantasy. His stories portray popular characters, both real and imaginary, and combine realism, fantasy and humor.

Cunqueiro created a masterful narrative world, combining his own realism with fantasy and humor. Many of his stories are accompanied by myths that incorporate elements from classic Galician literature. Examples include Sinbad, where a sailor becomes a retired man, and Merlín, set in Lugo, with the figure of Miranda. Merlín e familia consists of fantastic stories linked by the continuity of the narrator (Merlin's assistant), the setting and the characters, from Brittany to Geneva. Cunqueiro's inexhaustible imagination also appears in his romantic and humorous tales, often featuring singing and humor. As a prose writer, he is characterized by refined language and vivid images full of metaphors and a copious vocabulary. His texts alternate narrative with descriptive passages that give verisimilitude to the story.

Biography of Álvaro Cunqueiro

Born in Mondoñedo in 1911 and died in Vigo in 1981, Cunqueiro had a happy childhood in Mondoñedo, a place that remained present throughout his work. He studied philosophy and letters in Santiago de Compostela. He attended the Faladoira in the city of the time, collaborated in literary magazines and participated in activities of the Galeguista party. After the war, as a journalist, he worked first in Madrid and then in Vigo. His work earned him many honors, including the Critics' Prize, the Nadal Prize, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Santiago de Compostela.