Under Franco, literary works were subject to strict censorship enforcing conservative values and the fascist narrative of the Civil War. These are up-close glimpses of the severe deprivations that, as historian Miguel Ángel del Arco Blanco argues, Franco used to consolidate his power. Sniffing around the kitchen, she drinks cold, leftover vegetable stock.īedbugs infest the rooms and characters have discoloured teeth Gloria’s baby almost dies from pneumonia, a sickness of the undernourished. Andrea recalls how “ hunger I almost didn’t feel because it was chronic” weakens her will, making her irritable and unfocused. It was in these hunger years Laforet wrote Nada. These early years of Franco’s regime are known in Spain as “the hunger years”. While the rest of Europe was beginning to emerge from the nightmare of the second world war, by the mid-1940s Spain was settling into one of its bleakest periods. Biblioteca Virtual de Defensa/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY Nada was written in the early days of the Franco regime. The dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, whose rebel armies had ultimately vanquished the left-wing Republicans, would drag on until his death in 1975.

Nada, which in Spanish means “nothing”, emerged in one of the darkest and most stagnant periods of Spanish history.įor many Spaniards - already exhausted from the brutal Civil War that ripped the country apart between 19 - their worst nightmare had become a crushing, everyday reality.

Censorship and stagnation after the Civil War The scowling maid, Antonia, lurks in the shadows with her dog, relishing the violence.

Andrea’s tiny, tremulous grandmother tries to keep the peace, recalling how “there were never two brothers who loved each other like Román and Juanito”. Juan can be found either beating Gloria or painting bad nudes of her to sell for a pittance. If Gloria gets involved, Juan turns on her. Andrea’s arrogant artistic uncle Román goads his hot-headed brother, Juan, usually about his “piece of trash” wife, Gloria, who Román claims is obsessed with him. Every day, the same violent dramas recur. Arriving at her grandparents’ crumbling apartment, Andrea enters “what seemed like a nightmare”: a ragged array of relatives teetering between madness and starvation.Īndrea’s grandfather is dead and the household is under the command of her authoritarian aunt, Angustias, who promises to “mould” Andrea into obedience. Once glorious, Barcelona is now defeated and dilapidated, “its silence vivid with the respiration of a thousand souls behind darkened balconies”.

Nada by carmen laforet in english