Spanish Postwar Literature: Existentialism and Social Realism

Spanish Literature: Existentialism and Social Realism (1940s-1950s)

The Novel of the Immediate Postwar Years (1940s): Existential Realism

Spanish literature of the 1940s is dominated by anxiety and uprooting. It can be divided into three main streams:

• The continuation of nineteenth-century realism and traditional narratives.
• An approach to the Civil War from the perspective of the victors.
• A new perspective marked by a group of novels centered on an anti-heroic character faced with an indifferent society, dealing with issues such as the bitterness of everyday life, loneliness, frustration, and death.

Key Authors and Works of the 1940s

Camilo José Cela

In 1942, Camilo José Cela published The Family of Pascual Duarte. The story focuses on Pascual Duarte, a peasant from Extremadura sentenced to death for a series of murders, including that of his own mother. In 1948, he published Journey to the Alcarria, in which the narrator walks through the villages of this region of the province of Guadalajara, admiring the scenery and talking to its people. The Hive, published in 1951 (Buenos Aires), reflects the life of postwar Madrid during three days in 1942. Around three hundred characters appear and disappear from the pages of this novel without a clear resolution. The protagonists are the "thousands of people without history" who live under daily problems, overcome by misery and despair in the isolated cells of the vast beehive that symbolizes the city of Madrid. The structure of The Hive is based on multiple sequences of varying lengths, with jumps from one character to another and from one location to others, so that we witness events that often occur simultaneously in different locations (a contrapuntal technique). The story takes place over a little more than two days, and the settings are always spaces typical of social relations of the time: cafes, tenements, brothels, or the street.

Miguel Delibes

In 1948, Miguel Delibes published The Shadow of the Cypress is Long, and in 1950, The Road, where he portrays the life of a nation and its people through children's eyes. Other notable works include The Rats (1962), Five Hours with Mario (1966), and The Holy Innocents (1981), which reflects his concern for the world of peasantry.

Gonzalo Torrente Ballester

Gonzalo Torrente Ballester began writing Javier Mariño in 1943, during the war, a novel that celebrates the ideology of the victors. However, his work extends throughout the second half of the twentieth century, with Joys and Shadows being a highlight.

The Novel of the 1950s: Social Realism

The novel of the 1950s is concerned with recording economic and socio-political problems, a conception of Marxist-inspired art called social realism. Therefore, when referring to the narrative of these years, we speak of the Spanish social novel. Its limits range from 1951 to 1962.