Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary Basque Narrative

Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary Basque Narrative:

Three Portrayals of Terrorism

A dissertation submitted to the

Graduate School

of the University of Cincinnati

in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department of Romance and Arabic Languages and Literatures

of the College of Arts and Sciences

María Carmen Hernández

M.A. University of Cincinnati

June 2012

Committee Chair: A. Pérez-Simón, Ph.D.

Abstract

The objective of this study is to discuss the portrayal of terrorism in contemporary Basque narrative. The dissertation examines three contemporary novels written by Basque authors,

Soinujolearen semea (2003)/El hijo del acordeonista (2006) by Bernardo Atxaga, El ángulo ciego

(2008) by Luisa Etxenike, and Patria (2016) by Fernando Aramburu. The novels will be analyzed following three main lines of enquiry: the portrayal of Basque terrorism, literature as an ethical commitment, and the aesthetic constitution of the novels. The dissertation will argue that the three authors selected here have constructed narratives that reconcile aesthetics and ethical commitment when addressing the violent reality of life in Euskal Herria and the terrorism of the group ETA. I have identified three themes in the novels: exile and memory in Atxaga’s novel, the experience of the victims of terrorism in Etxenike’s, and the saga that explores the complex coexistence between victims and perpetrators in Aramburu’s Patria. I will argue that after the terrorist attacks of

September 11, global terrorism arose transforming national and localized terrorism as communities sought to understand the phenomenon while rescuing the testimony of victims, underlying their plight and trauma. The interdisciplinary approach to this study aims to provide a background not only to the sociohistorical complexities surrounding the state of contemporary Basque narrative, but also the dynamic in the fields of production.

iii Acknowledgements

Many people helped make this dissertation a reality. It would not have been possible without the unconditional support of my husband Sandun Samarakoon and my son Ryan. It is thanks to their encouragement that I was able to complete this endeavor. I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to the advisor of my doctoral committee, Dr. Andrés Peréz Simón for his unceasing support, expertise, encouragement, and good humor. I also would like to thank the members of this committee Dr. Patricia Valladares-Ruíz and Dr. Carlos Gutiérrez for their guidance. I am grateful for my good friends and fellow graduate students, Eugenia Mazur and Lía

Buitrago for encouraging me not to give up.

iv Table of contents

Abstract...... ii

Introduction...... 1

Chapter I: Contemporary Basque Narrative: Terrorism and Ethics...... 12

1.1. Contemporary Basque narrative in context...... 12

1.1.1. The literary field: A model of analysis...... 14

1.1.2. Commitment in the works of Atxaga, Etxenike and Aramburu...... 18

1.2. Ethics and literature...... 25

1.3. Terrorism and literature...... 32

1.3.1. The concept of terrorism. Global terrorism in Spain...... 32

1.3.2. Terrorism and literature...... 45

Chapter II: Luisa Etxenike’s El ángulo ciego...... 56

2.1. Victims of terrorism: The end of silence...... 57

2.2. El ángulo ciego by Luisa Etxenike...... 69

Chapter III: Bernardo Atxaga’s Soinujolearen semea/El hijo del acordeonista...... 109

3.1. Memory and fiction...... 112

3.2. Transformation of the self...... 123

Chapter IV: Fernando Aramburu’s Patria...... 144

4.1. The concept of the Spanish “social novel” ...... 149

4.2. Social issues in contemporary novels...... 156

4.3. Whose “patria”? Confronting a mutual past...... 160

4.4. Literary symbolism in Patria ...... 178

v Conclusions...... 185

Bibliography...... 193

vi Introduction

¿Te preguntas, viajero, por qué hemos muerto jóvenes, Por qué hemos matado estúpidamente? Nuestros padres mintieron: eso es todo. (Jon Juaristi, Spoon River Euskadi, Suma de varia intención, 1987)

It is often argued that in order to understand who we are, one needs to know where one comes from. In other words, we must examine the past in our search for answers. The past and present are connected by tradition, family, religion, and nation. What happens when the past is distorted? What are the results of an “imagined country” and the dogma of exceptionalism? The brief poem that opens these lines condemns the Basque Nationalist Party, the radical left, and ETA for exploiting identity dogmas created by a myth that has served as a platform to generate violent acts in the pursuit for the independence of the Basque people. Jon Juaristi, like many other young people born during the postwar years, was initially attracted to the ranks of ETA and supported the organization’s revolutionary and independent ideals as well as its resistance to Franco’s regime.

However, he became disillusioned with their violent agenda and rejected ETA and what it stood for. For Juaristi, the Basque conflict became an important part of his literary works – poems and essays in particular. Just like Juaristi, there are numerous writers who write fiction about the conflict. For those who have been born in the Basque Country or have made it their home, writing entails a number of dilemmas, particularly one associated with language. Some writers choose to do it in the Basque language while others use Spanish. The land where Mari, the lady of Anboto dwells in caves; the place where the ironworks industry changed not only the landscape, but also the traditional rural society; the territory where conflicts became bloody; the nation within a nation; the people who at last appear to be ready to overcome decades of violence, fear and silence; a

7 society ready to move on and confront its own past. Juaristi’s poem is a referent for this dissertation because the author has been an outspoken critic of ETA and his sympathizers, and as a result he was threatened by the organization. Just like Juaristi, the writers who will be discussed in this dissertation (Fernando Aramburu, Bernardo Atxaga, Luisa Etxenike), witnessed the social, economic and historic events that took place during the last years of Franco’s regime, and the transition to a democratic government. In addition, their fiction denounces violence in all their incarnations (being ETA’s terrorism, Franco’s repression or police torture). The novels I will examine illustrate how ETA became a pariah organization in the context of global terrorism since the events of September 11, 2001. Basque society no longer supports the violent message and actions of the terrorism group. As society changes so does Basque narrative. It has become evident that there is a shifting focus from discussing identitary ideologies to recognizing the victims of terrorism.

As the 21st century began with the events of September 11, the global community faced a new kind of global terror. When the World Trade Center collapsed, Spain just like the rest of the world changed dramatically. The political reality of the country was not untouched by the greatest terrorist attack in history. As Prime Minister Aznar became a resolute supporter of the war of terror, the US State Department put ETA members on its black list of international terrorists. This helped block the flow of finances to ETA and increased the cooperation in prosecuting members of the organization in other countries. In addition, the consequences of the Islamist attacks in

Spain on March 11, 2004 went beyond Partido Popular’s loss of power. Spanish society and, above all, the Basques unanimously condemned the terrorist attacks in Madrid. Shortly after the brutal attacks, the newspaper El País published an article featuring the condemnation of spokesperson for Batasuna (ETA’s political wing) Arnaldo Otegi who expressed his absolute denunciation of

8 the massacre, “absolute rechazo” (Gastaminza, “La firme”). Otegi also denied, what Aznar’s government assumed at first, that ETA was behind the attacks. Other abertzales1 and media outlets like the independent newspaper Gara published an editorial entitled “Barbaridad inadmissible”, condemning the attacks (“barbaridad inadmissible, sea cual sea su autoría”, “no cabe ningun tipo de justificación”). Consequently, March 11, 2004, brought about a change of strategy for ETA.

All these events led ETA and those close to the organization down the path of renouncing violence, that concluded with the declaration of the total cessation of all armed action on October 20, 2011.

Societies reflect on culture and culture reflects on societies. In the general panorama of contemporary Basque literature, the topic of the so-called Basque conflict, “appears to point toward an ethical examination of violence in order to disown own it … the focus has moved to an examination of violence on society” (Kortazar, “The Challenge” 178). There is an extensive corpus of narrative works written by Basque authors that deal with ETA, terrorism, and violence. For the purpose of this study I have selected three novels. One of them was originally written in Basque and two in Spanish.

This dissertation examines three contemporary novels written by Basque authors,

Soinujolearen semea (2003)/El hijo del acordeonista (2006) by Bernardo Atxaga, El ángulo ciego

1 Basque term meaning Basque radical nationalist.

9 As the publication dates of the novels range from 2003 to 2016, I have identified an evolution in the themes portrayed in the novels: exile, memory and the power of ransformation in Atxaga’s novel, the experience of the victims of terrorism in Etxenike’s, and the saga that explores the complex coexistence between victims and perpetrators in Aramburu’s Patria. I will argue that after the terrorist attacks of September 11, global terrorism arose transforming national and localized terrorism as communities sought to understand the phenomenon while rescuing the testimony of victims, underlying their plight and trauma.

This study is divided into four chapters. The first one will contextualize the novels within contemporary Spanish and Basque narratives, the relation between ethics and literature and the relation between literature and the terrorism of ETA. In the second chapter, I will analyze El

ángulo ciego, by Luisa Etxenike. This novel focuses on people affected by terrorism acts. Rather than centering on the exploits of the militants, the author has chosen to examine the fears, the shattered dreams, and the atmosphere of conflict and division that engulfed a generation of people trapped in the vision of an “imagined community”. The third chapter will be dedicated to

Soinujolearen semea/El hijo del acordeonista, by Bernardo Atxaga. The most acclaimed and universal of Basque writers, Atxaga returns to the mythical land of Obaba to construct a journey through time and space while questioning and destabilizing the nationalist discourse. The concluding chapter will focus on the last work by Fernando Aramburu, Patria, a novel that by portraying two families that represent opposing views and positions within the so-called Basque conflict, reveals a prismatic vision of the reality of the Basque Country within the context of ETA.

In the first chapter, I will place the novels within the context of contemporary Spanish and

Basque narratives. As one of these novels was originally written in Basque, I will discuss issues appertaining to the peculiarities of writing in a minority language as well as important historical

10 and social background to understand the reality of the Basque Country. I will use to the concept of “literary field” as conceived by Pierre Bourdieu as model of analysis. In addition, I will examine the relation between ethics and literature in the 20th and 21st centuries, and the interest in academic fields to help us understand the moral commitment present in the corpus selected. I will refer to various scholars including María Teresa López de la Vieja, Martha Nussbaum, Wayne Booth and

Zachary Newton. The relationship between ethics and literature has a number of aspects such as the moral reflection the novels contain, the exemplary characters, the uplifting power of the text, and the portrayal of forgiveness. Lastly, in this chapter I will consider the relationship between terrorism and literature. For this purpose, I will survey the phenomenon of terrorism in Spain and the world, since the mid-19th century, when anarchists’ movements initiated criminal activities that may explain contemporary terrorism. Michael Burleigh and Walter Laqueur have conducted extensive studies about these movements. In Spain, scholars like Jon Juaristi, Julio Caro Baroja, and Antonio Elorza have made great contributions to the study of terrorism. I will also examine terrorism in Spain including the anarchist organization “Mano Negra” founded in Andalucia during the 19th century, although my focus is the terrorism of ETA from its foundation in 1959 until the present day. The relationship between literature and terrorism is studied from world narrative, Spanish and Basque narrative. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Joseph Conrad, Pío Baroja, Ramón

Saizarbitoria and Raúl Guerra Garrido have written novels that address various aspects of terrorism. In addition, I will evaluate some approaches to literature within the context of the study of terrorism in works such as Plotting Terror: Novelists and Terrorists in Contemporary Fiction, by Margaret Scanlan, and Terrorism and Modern Literature, by Alex Houen.

In chapter two the focus will be victims of terrorism as portrayed in El ángulo ciego (2008), by Luisa Etxenike. El ángulo ciego is a novel divided into two distinct sections - a novel and the

11 original version, both narrated by Martín, a teenager in the “novel” and an adult in the original version. Martin is a teenager whose father has lost his life in a terrorist attack while protecting a local politician in San Sebastián. In the first part, Martín narrates the events that took place after burying his father. The enraged adolescent confronts the supporters of ETA. He knows who they are and he wants them to feel the fear he and his family endure every single day. In the original version, the readers become aware that what they had just read was the fictionalized events of what had happened. Martín is writing the novel of what he believes he should have done. His father was shot but Martín was miles away when it happened. Martín had fled his homeland some years before, leaving his family behind, self-exiling in Paris because he was terrified of becoming another collateral victim of the violence. Furthermore, Martín was embarrassed of what his father represented. Now, as a writer he believes he has a duty to give testimony of what it meant to be an open target. The title of the novel refers to the intimate space invented by Martín’s parents (Martín and Miren) to preserve, and secure their dreams and hopes while remaining almost oblivious to the daily threat they faced due to the nature of Martín’s father work.

In 2009, the novel earned Etxenike the Euskadi Award for narrative written in Spanish, granted by the Department of Culture of the Basque Government, having received praise for portraying the intimacy of pain, trauma and also guilt faced by victims of terrorism. Etxenike uses metafiction and postmodern aesthetics to heighten the message that holds on the humanity and dignity of the victim. In an interview with Pilar Rodriguez, professor at Deusto University,

Etxenike affirms her desire to narrate the version of the story of those who have suffered the most, but also the need to avoid the cliché by empowering Miren to overcome grief when she focuses on

“el ángulo ciego” and “los pequeños detalles” that allow her to smile and maintain her dignity.

Miren represents the voice of reason against Martín’s wishes for vengeance, his fears and his

12 feelings of guilt. Miren desires peace, and considers that everyone has a role to play in order to defeat the terrorists. Her role is to inhabit the “ángulo ciego” while her son’s, the writer, is to inform, to give testimony in the pages of his novel. This brings us to examining the ethical value of the novel, and the commitment of the author as “the writer” who by means of the novel reflects on what has happened in the Basque Country. Miren rejects violence and instead advocates conciliation. In her article, “Meta ficción, irenismo y víctimas del terrorismo en El ángulo ciego”, scholar María-Dolores Alonso-Rey focuses her analysis on the ethics and aesthetic character of the novel. In her words, “Etxenike presenta una visión de la víctima que coincide con la de quienes hacen del irenismo de las víctimas su esencia” (1). Hence underlying the ethical attitude displayed by Miren, who does not seek vengeance, but instead wishes to plant the seeds of reconciliation with her insistence of planting flowers and watering them next to her husband’s resting place, so that they do not die like her husband did (“Es mejor plantarlas, asi siempre están frescas”, Miren says, El ángulo 173). The novel stands out in virtue of what will come to be called narrative ethics based on Zachary’s Newton theory: a hybrid discourse integrating a reflective theory of moral nature on the elements of the literary narrative, that is to say, the space, the story, and the sequence of events with the narrative voices. The dialectic of both stories, fiction and original version, delivers meaning to the novel, and Miren’s vision of dignity and restrain prevails as opposed to the terrorist violence.

In El ángulo ciego, the family of the victim becomes engulfed in a spiral of silence as the public space is controlled by a predominantly hateful discourse that seeks to divide. The fear of the other materializes in intolerance and hate towards anyone who does not support the dogma of separatism. This repulsive view of the world results in the denial of humanity for those whose line of work places them in direct conflict with the terrorist such as Martín’s father, a bodyguard of a

13 local polititian. A spiral of silence where fear and suspicion reign and prevent the open denunciation of violence. The social theorist Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann proposed “The Spiral of

Silence Theory” in her article “The Spiral of Silence a Theory of Public Opinion” published in the

Journal of Communication in 1974, to explain individual behavior in society with a number of hypotheses that can be applied to the fears and silence of Basque society in the context of terrorism.

Subsequently, Noelle-Neumann expanded her theory in her book The Spiral of Silence: Public

Opinion – Our Social Skin, published in 1984. Her focal hypotheses are:

1. Most people are afraid of social isolation.

2. Therefore, people constantly observe other people’s behavior in order to find out

which opinions and behaviors are met with approval or rejection in the public sphere.

3. People exert “isolation pressure” on other people, for instance, by frowning or turning

away when somebody says or does something that is rejected by public opinion.

4. People tend to hide their opinion away when they think that they would expose

themselves to “isolation pressure” with their opinion.

5. People who feel public support, in contrast, tend to express their opinion loud and

clear.

Etxenike uses spaces to represent the conflict in Basque society. The parental house is a small universe of gathering and togetherness but it is also a place where the young challenge the old questioning their actions. Martín feels protected at home but at the same time experiences alienation surrounded by symbols he does not yet understand: his father’s white clothing, his father’s tea utensils, a mirror to comtemplate his own image and compare it to his father’s. For

14 Martín, the cemetery seems to be not only a place of solace, but also refuge where he -alone or with his friend Ane -reflects on the conflict that has ravaged the lives of thousands of people tearing communities apart. Other exterior spaces such as the street, bars, squares appeared to be haunted mazes inhabited not by individuals but by shadows, almost absent, who conduct their private affairs dominated by an oneiric sense of doom. Impending tragedy dominates as Martín experiences the gaze of others while enduring entrapment in a spiral of silence.

The third chapter will be dedicated to the reconstruction of memory and personal transformations as portrayed in Soinujolearen semea/El hijo del acordeonista, by Bernardo

Atxaga. Soinujolearen semea is a novel that describes the recovery of the past to renew it and finally transform it into literature just as the characters embark on a number of journeys and experience several “rebirths”. The story begins when Joseba travels to his friend’s ranch in

California. His childhood friend David Imaz, an amateur writer, leaves a manuscript narrating his personal memory from the late 1950s, his student years, his ETA militancy and subsequent renunciation of the terrorist group. The manuscript is edited and transformed by Joseba, alter ego of Atxaga, and this is the book that reaches the hands of the reader. Therefore, the novel is a polyphonic text with various voices one of which belongs to David while the other, Josebas’s is a character who discusses freely the veracity of the different stories put together in the novel,

“¿Puedo decir más cosas sobre la lectura? ...A mí me parece que el relato de Etxeberria tiene una parte floja. Eso del policía del tren, lo de la llamada al gobernador … La gente de Three Rivers quizás se lo crea, pero yo no … En cualquier caso siempre es necesario una transfiguración” (465).

Memory matters whether individual or collective because our present actions are connected to memories of past experiences. The past becomes a literary object and the work itself becomes the embodiment of such a past, linking it to memory and writing.

15 In the fourth chapter I will analyze Patria, by Fernando Aramburu, a novel that narrates the stories of two families in a small town of the Basque Country. Both families, Bittori and Txato, on the one hand, and Miren and Joxian, on the other, enjoyed a good relationship until the terrorist acts of ETA led to estrangement, kidnapping, and assassination. Bittori is forced to leave town to avoid daily intimidation and reprisal. With the cease of violence Bittori returns and then recalls the events that led to the assassination of Txato. The relationship between the two families epitomizes a struggle between the “chosen ones” to defend the imagined and mythical Basque paradise “Basque terrorists”, like Joxe Mari, who see terrorism as a means to an end, and those who simply wish to live their lives in peace. As the narrator explains, Joxe Mari used to say to his parents that he:

Entendía la militancia como un sacrificio para la liberación de nuestro pueblo y que

si alguien les venía al aita o a la ama con el cuento de que se había metido en una banda

de criminales, que no se lo creyeran, que él lo único que hacía era darlo todo por Euskal

Herria y también por los derechos de esos que se quejan y luego no hacen nada. Eran

muchos gudaris. Cada vez más. Lo major de la juventud vasca ... Un muxu grande y espero

que estéis orgullosos. (68)

By means of the two families, readers learn not only how the victims felt and still feel, but also how the perpetrators justified their actions. Patria depicts the suffocating atmosphere in the

Basque Contry’s most militant towns. Aramburu alternates narration with dialogue allowing the protagonists to speak and express their fears, resolution, and fanaticism. The novel has been a commercial and critical success, having been published in France, Poland, Germany, Portugal,

16 Russia, and United Kingdom, while sparkling a renewed interest in the victims of terrorism in addition to the publication of other novels representing the experience of the victims.

17 Chapter I

Contemporary Basque Narrative: Terrorism and Ethics

1. 1. Contemporary Basque narrative in context

In this section I plan to examine the corpus selected within the context of contemporary

Spanish and Basque narratives, in light of the idea of “commitment”. I will discuss commitment in relation to the so-called “social literature” and its role in Spain during the post war years. As the novels selected are part of what may be classified as a minority literature or a literature in the margins, I will use a number of references that have been used to examine Spanish narrative as a whole. For the same reason, I will discuss issues appertaining to the peculiarities of writing in a minority language as well as important historical and social background to understand the reality of the Basque Country. It is important to underline that Bernardo Atxaga has had a lengthy and successful career as a writer and is perhaps the most recognized, read and published author among those writing in Basque. Atxaga represents the image of the professional writer with extensive international impact beyond the system of the Basque literary system promoting Basque literature.

Hence, he has cultivated a diverse writing style ranging from Atxagas’s Avant-Gardist period in the 1970s, to Obababoak in the 1980s, to a more realistic cycle beginning in the 1990s with Gizona bere bakardadean/El hombre solo (1991), a novel that narrates the lives of a group of ETA militants who have left the band.

Luisa Etxenike and Fernando Aramburu write in Spanish but as part of the Basque literary community, their works are subject to some of the issues surrounding the funding and support of

Basque literature by the Autonomous Basque Government. When in 2011 Aramburu was awarded the Tusquets Award for his novel Años lentos, he expressed criticism against authors who write in

18 Euskara. In an interview with Luís Prados published in the cultural section of the daily El País,

Aramburu replied to the question whether those authors are free to write to publish what they want:

No lo son porque están subvencionados, forman parte de la campaña de promoción del

idioma. En el País Vasco se mantiene la ficción de que existen lectores en euskera y por

tanto es necesario el apoyo oficial. La subvención tiene un doble peligro: te permite ser

escritor pero sabes que si te sales del camino te pierdes parte del pastel. A Bernardo

Atxaga le tengo un gran afecto, es una excelente persona, pero ha tocado el tema de ETA

de manera metafórica, sin nombrar lo evidente: el sufrimiento y la sangre. No es un

hombre libre y trata de complacer a unos y a otros. (“Los escritores” 29 Nov. 2011)

More recently, in November 2016, Ramón Saizarbitoria and Aramburu participated in a discussion on the tempestuous relationship between two groups of Basque writers (those who write in Spanish vs. those who write in Basque). The discussion took place in Lagun2, a bookstore in San Sebastián.

There was a certain degree of animosity between the two writers and their position on writing in the Basque Country. Saizorbitoria dismissed the idea that because the Basque government promotes the work of literature in Basque, the writer is conditioned to think in a particular way.

Aramburu argued, “Yo puedo explicarme en total libertad y no por eso pongo en peligro mi situación editorial”, while Saizorbitoria responded to Aramburu’s accusations, (“Me insultas si me dices que lo que se cobra por las lecturas en aula condiciona mi pensamiento”). Indeed, there has

2 See “Tenso debate entre Saizarbitoria y Aramburu” in Diario Vasco, November 5, 2016. Also, a recording of the event may be found in YouTube.

19 been friction between the two factions of writers often claiming that writers in Basque ignored the plight of the victims while focusing on exploring the reasons terrorists have turned to violence to defend the cause of Basque people. This debate between literature in two languages continues to the present day.

1.1.1. The literary field: A model of analysis

The concept of literary field, as posited by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, will be helpful to situate the novels studied in this dissertation within the context of contemporary narrative. Bourdieu borrows some of the sociological analyses of Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and Norbert Elias to formulate a social theory of action that emphasizes the mechanism of social reproduction at work in many fields, as noted by Bernard Lahire (“Specificity” 411). As societies progress, their economy, sciences, arts and other spheres of social activity begin to acquire autonomy by defining their limits and territory. Most scholars propose that for literature this moment occurred in the 19th century, when the literary field was established as such and acquired its own autonomy. The process by which the arts were emancipated from the other social spheres was marked by a number of pivotal moments such as the invention of “an art of living”, as

Bourdieu explains in The Rules of Art:

With the assemblage of a very numerous population of young people aspiring to live by

art, and separated from all other social categories by the art of living they are in the

course of inventing, a genuine society within society makes its appearance … as early

as the end of the eighteenth century, a society of writers and artists in which

scribblers and daubers predominate, at least numerically, has something extraordinary

20 about it, something without precedent, and it gives rise to much investigation, first of

all among its members. (55-56)

In this study, I will refer to the invention of pure aesthetics (The Rules 105) to discuss the impact on the study of literature from an ethical standpoint. Bourdieu discusses how this happened:

The revolution of the gaze effected in and through the revolution in writing both

presupposes and brings forth a rupture of the link between the ethical and the aesthetic,

which goes hand in hand with a total conversion of lifestyle. In fact, the pure gaze

which in those days was a matter of inventing (instead of being content with putting it

to work, as today), at the cost of breaking the links between art and morality, requires a

posture of impassivity, indifference and detachment, if not a cynical casualness which is

poles apart from the double ambivalence, composed of horror and fascination, of the

petit-bourgeois with respect to the ‘bourgeois’ and the ‘people’. (The Rules 109)

This initial outlook of the authors responsible for the autonomy of the field, especially Gustave

Flaubert and Charles Baudelaire, is still relevant and its consequences can be felt in the present day because the so-called “dehumanized”3 literature preserves, at least in appearance, the spirit that privileged aesthetics over ethics in order to preserve the independence of the arts. This position, so radical in its beginnings, as Bourdieu analyzes, allows us to understand the stereotyped

3 See José Ortega y Gasset’s classic study, “La deshumanización del arte” on the Spanish narrative of the 1920s-30s. Also see a recent reevaluation in Andrés Pérez Simón’s “(Mis)Reading Joyce in the Context of the ‘Arte Nuevo’ Narrative” (38-39).

21 approaches that impute to such literature a lack of commitment, which the writers initially renounced in exchange for the autonomy demanded by the institution of the field.

According to Bourdieu, a field is a microcosm within the macrocosm of society. The field is autonomous, that is, its operation is governed by internal laws. It follows the structural model, according to which is organized as a system or set of elements, called positions, which are the places that occupy the members of the field, which have relations of opposition or difference between them, from which they obtain their value. The field is a dynamic system, whose condition of existence is the struggle “to transform or conserve this field of forces” (The Field 30).

Nonetheless, this relationship is not equalitarian for the literary field, as the fields of literary production occupy a dominant position, temporarily within the field of power. The degree of autonomy the literary field achieves from its position depends on:

As liberated as they may be from external constraints and demands, they are traversed by

the necessity of the fields which encompass them: the need for profit, whether economic

or political. It follows that they are at any one time the site of a struggle between two

principles of hierarchization: the heteronomous principle, which favors those who

dominate the field economically and politically (for example, ‘bourgeois art’), and the

autonomous principle (for example, ‘art for art's sake’), which leads its most radical

defenders to make of temporal failure a sign of election and of success a sign of

compromise with the times. (The Rules 216-7)

On the one hand, the prestige and degree of legitimacy is obtained by the writers from their peers, according to a principle of autonomous hierarchy, when the field is very autonomous or at least in

22 the most autonomous areas of the field; and of the prizes, official recognitions, successes of sales, etc., when the field is less autonomous and depends more on the laws of the market. In either case,

Bourdieu adopts an external position that leaves the text itself aside, as a factor of legitimacy and hierarchy. What’s more, he makes a precision:

The producer of the value of the work of art is not the artist but the field of production

as a universe of belief which produces the value of the work of art as a fetish by

producing the belief in the creative power of the artist. Given that the work of art does

not exist as a symbolic object endowed with value unless it is known and recognized -

that is to say, socially instituted as a work of art by spectators endowed with the

aesthetic disposition and competence necessary to know it and recognize it as such - the

science of works takes as object not only the material production of the work but also the

production of the value of the work or, what amounts to the same thing, of the belief in

the value of the work. (The Rules 229)

That is why, Lahire and other authors criticize that the so-called science of works that Bourdieu tries to implement does not address a very crucial question (“What is literature?”). Lahire argues that “the sociology of the literary field of Pierre Bourdieu is essentially a sociology of the producers rather than of the productions” (52). According to this premise, authors are reduced to a sort of agents without agency since they are part of a structure that overcomes them. Despite this limitation, however, the model of the literary field has an operative value that helps to understand the position of the writers I will be discussing within the context of contemporary Basque narrative.

On the one hand, their works are the result of commitment to writing as an aesthetic endevour. On

23 the other hand, they have explicity addressed such issues of social importance as ETA terrorism.

In terms of the science of literature tested by Bourdieu, their position in the field is dynamic, changing, from one that contributes to the autonomy of literature, away from other social spheres, to an intermediate position that defends the social commitment.

1. 1. 2. Comittment in the works of Atxaga, Etxenike, and Aramburu

Since I have posited that the selected novels revealed the moral commitment of the authors and their stance on the terrorism of ETA, it may be useful to refer the so-called social literature.

Social literature emerged in Spain in the late 1940s and early 1950s when writers, subjected to the censorship of social topics, channeled their criticism in literary works to aspects of Franco’s regime such as the stagnant economy, unemployment, and inequalities. As Janet Pérez notes, “Postwar literature’s second period and characteristic core, social writing was committed and existentially engagé, opposing all that Franco represented” (635). Pérez observes how José María Castellet and Juan Goytisolo, among others literary figures, considered, “literature as a weapon to change the world and that art for art’s sake was immoral” (636). In his book, La novela social, (1973),

Pablo Gil Casado studies the social novel establishing its formal characteristics and thematic, and then continues to assess its evolution beginning with the 16th and 17th centuries, when literature began to reflect, “un contenido de tipo social que corresponde a la deteriorización de las condiciones de vida” (69) up to the 1950s, period in which Gil Casado focuses his study. He then classifies the novels of the last period in seven groups according to thematic criteria: “la abulia, el campo, el obrero y el empleado, la vivienda, los vencidos, los libros de viajes, y la desmitificación”

(147). Gil Casado4 denotes a number of common features in this group of novels:

4 See also Francisco Álamo ‘s study, La novela social española: Conformación ideológica, teoría y crítica. Almeria University, 1996.

1. Trata del estado de la sociedad o de ciertas desigualdades e injusticias que existen en

ella. 2. Se refiere a todo un sector o grupo, a varios o a la totalidad de una sociedad,

pero, en cualquier caso, los incidentes y personajes son de carácter colectivo. 3. No

se limita a temas proletaristas.4. Sigue patrones realistas, críticos, socialistas y

dialécticos. 5. Se ajusta a tres moldes diferentes: el de György Lukács (realismo crítico),

el de Bertol Brech (nuevo realismo), y el del romanticismo revolucionario (nuevo

romanticismo).6. La realidad vulgar y cotidiana se transforma en una realidad

aparente o artística. 7. El estado de cosas se hace patente por medio de un testimonio.

8. Para mostrar la situación se crea un personaje representativo. Realidad aparente,

personaje representativo y testimonio, sirven de base a una denuncia o crítica. 10. Exige

una perspectiva correcta. (66)

Gonzalo Sobejano, in Novela española de nuestro tiempo (en busca del pueblo perdido), published in 2005, identifies three directions of the postwar novel: the existential novel, the social novel, and the structural novel. This typology includes three types of realistic reactions to the historical event.

These are, according to Sobejano, “la existencia del hombre español actual, transida de incertidumbre; el estado de la sociedad española actual, partida en soledades, y la exploración de la conciencia de la persona a través de su inserción o deserción respecto de la estructura toda de la sociedad española actual” (16). Sobejano defines the social novel as, “un tipo de novela que tiende a hacer artísticamente inteligible el vivir de la colectividad en estados y conflictos a través de los cuales se revela la presencia de una crisis y la urgencia de una solución” (203). In order to understand this type of novel it is necessary to take into account the social atmosphere of postwar

25 Spain, which social authors share with existential authors, with the difference that, “las circunstancias en que como escritores se inician los escritores sociales son forzosamente otras, y no les inducen a la evasión (por retraso o distracción) ni al recuerdo inmediato de la guerra, sino al compromiso y a la memoria del conflicto ya lejano” (Sobejano 204).

Vance R. Holloway offers a similar definition: “La novela social ofrece un testimonio significativo sobre alguna colectividad y destaca la intención de constatar de alguna forma las circunstancias históricas del periodo abarcado” (127). Nonetheless, Holloway acknowledges that he follows a flexible criterion to include within this label up to four distinct categories: “la novela proletaria, la policíaca, la generacional y la histórica” (128). Among these categories, the generational novel is the one that gathers the concept of commitment. Holloway’s argument can be read in light of Santos Alonso’s observation on how “Las novelas más significativas de la transición abordan ideológicamente el testimonio de su momento histórico, entendiendo esta afirmación no como mero costumbrismo sino como compromiso personal con la problemática del hombre en el tiempo y el lugar que le ha tocado vivir” (10).

After Holloway and Alonso, it can be asserted that commitment foregrounds the circumstance of being a witness of the times. The commitement is the circumstance of being a writer of a particular generation and historical moment, and as such there is an obligation to apply moral values to that world. This contextualization should not incur in a reduction that Ignacio

Soldevila Durante imputes precisely to Gil Casado: “que la novela social, para él, no es sino novela política ideológicamente y aun estéticamente adscrita al marxismo y cuya intención no es sino colaborar a minar y a destruir la sociedad burguesa para llegar a un estado socialista” (216).

Soldevila insists on social literature being an agent of possible social change, “sobre su naturaleza de arma de acción social, que pretende ser eficaz y actuar sobre las injusticias, avivar las

26 conciencias, e incluso tratar de cambiar la sociedad” (210). He also criticizes the realist novel of the 1950s for sacrificing “los elementos habitualmente requeridos para la realización de una obra de arte” (216), in order to provide, supposedly, political impact. Thus, social literature ended up defending an idea of “commitment” that required the subordination or neglect of aesthetic values for the sake of greater political efficiency. Sobejano discusses two novel models, the testimonial and the lyric novel:

Ésta designará la novela superlativamente poética que tiende a integrar un conjunto

saturado de las virtudes del texto poético por excelencia: el texto en verso (épico,

dramático, lírico), en el cual los estratos de la obra de arte de lenguaje, desde el sonido al

sentido, cumplen un máximo de concentración y perdurabilidad. La novela testimonio,

satisfaga o no aquella cualidad superlativa, aspira primordialmente a otro fin: dar forma

de novela a un contenido histórico experimentado y verificable fuera del cerco narrativo.

(“Testimonio” 97)

Sobejano argues that there are two historical trends beginning in the 19th century, naturalism, symbolism, and continuing in the 20th century with the lyric novel of the 1930s, and social literature until the arrival of the so-called “dehumanized novel” (102-3). As paradigm of the testimonial novel, Sobejano studies El Jarama (1956), by Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, and as paradigm of the lyric novel Saúl ante Samuel (1980), by Juan Benet. Between these two there were authors like Luis Martín Santos, Juan Goytisolo, Luis Goytisolo and Gonzalo Torrente Ballester

(110-12). This distinction is founded on the relationship that their work establishes with reality.

27 The different features are listed in terms of epistemic attitude, themes, composition and language

(“Testimonio” 97-99). The ones directly related with the concept of commitment are summarized:

La actitud de la novela testimonio no puede ser otra que la representación épica

(detenida en cada momento de su trayecto) de un mundo histórico social actual, atenta a

las relaciones y circunstancias que forman lo que Hegel llamaba la prosa de la vida real,

mientras que la actitud de la novela poema tiende a la compenetración de sujeto y objeto

que signa el género lírico. (“Testimonio” 97)

Ramón Buckley states that each novel constitutes a particular solution to the creative challenges faced by writers. He establishes a parallel dichotomy to the one posited by Sobejano, although significantly different to his. Buckley classifies novelistic production according to the criterion of the “relación del autor con su obra” (30) and differentiates between two main groups, objectivists

(El Jarama) and subjectivists (Tiempo de silencio), depending on the authorial presence in their novels.

From the discussion above, it can be inferred that critics have defined commitment in light of the distance between external reality and literary text. According to this view, less distance from the reality portrayed would mean greater commitment. Going back to Gil Casado’s classifications (novela existencial, novela social, novela estructural), it is the third one, the “novela estructural”, the one associated with the idea of no social commitment. As expressed in Gil

Casado’s own words in his book La novela deshumanizada Española (1958-1988), (1990), “Es una novela con estética, pero sin ética” (70). In Spain, after the postwar years and the social decade of the fifties, it came a time of relative stability and prosperity that rendered the writers abandon

28 the need for a committed realism. The new political and social circumstances favored a deshumanized thematic, detached from sociopolitical compromises.

When referring to the structural novel it is essential to refer to Juan Benet, whose novelistic practice received both critical acclaim and criticism. As Brad Epps observes, “Juan Benet’s repudiation of engagé literature and his refusal to clarify the implications of the Civil War sustained a literary practice that irked some and that bewitched, even influenced, others - notably

Millás and Marías” (710). The deliberate will of formal darkness, in the face of the clarity of the social novel, disables its literature for social and combative efficacy, in the eyes of the committed.

However, this does not mean absence of ideology, as Epps emphasizes:

Anti-consumerist, uncompromising, elitist, and yet widely recognized as a contemporary

literary master, Benet remains an exceptional literary force. It is not that Benet is the only

demanding writer, but that he is one of the few from the Francoist period whose

“politics” were not made clear in his writing (though for some critics the very lack of

clarity was a sign of support for the status quo). (710)

The criticism directed at Juan Benet, and by extension the structural novel, is based on the idea that a supposedly clearer literature is also more altruistic, because of its evidence and immediacy, while mediation supposes egoism, elitism and isolation, as Gil Casado argues (70). It seems that realism is more capable of treatment and criticism of reality than other perspectives such as the lyric novel or subjectivism. The greater or lesser commitment of the narrative, according to this perspective, is then based on the degree of explicitness in the referentiality of the text. The theory of Jan Mukarovský will be helpful in understanding how Mukarovský warns that an immanent

29 study of the literary work would be incomplete, because it would not capture the three components of the artistic sign:

1. un símbolo sensible creado por el artista, 2. un significado, “objeto estético”

(depositado en la conciencia colectiva), y 3. una relación con la cosa designada,

relación que apunta al contexto total de los fenómenos sociales. El segundo de estos

componentes contiene la estructura propiamente dicha de la obra. (“El arte” 91)

The type of artistic sign that represents with more clarity those three components is the “signo autónomo”, whose referent is reality, the designed thing, or it can also be understood as “el contexto social de los fenómenos sociales, como la filosofía, la política, la religion, la economía, etc.” (90). On the other hand, there is another type of artistic sign, the “signo comunicativo” (91), as in the thematic arts such as literature, painting, or sculpture. In the communicative sign, unlike the autonomous, the relationship with the referent is more accessible, even verifiable. Mukarovský warns that the theme as “eje de cristalización”, contains greater power to designate the referent,

“todos los componentes de la obra de arte, hasta los más ‘formales’, poseen un valor comunicativo propio, independiente del tema” (91-2). Mukarovský further discusses that “Las dos funciones sígnicas, la comunicativa y la autónoma, que coexisten en las artes temáticas, constituyen una de las antinomias dialécticas básicas de la evolución de estas artes. Su dualidad se manifiesta, en el curso de la evolución, por oscilaciones constantes de la relación con la realidad” (95).

Applied to the relationship between social novel and structural novel, it is understood that the former behaves more like a “communicative sign”, whose relationship with the referent is clearer, while the structural novel maintains a less clear relationship with things, more typical of

30 the “autonomous sign”. However, as Epps says, Benet’s novel does not stop addressing reality or conflicts such as the Civil War, but distributes its referentiality beyond the “axis of crystallization” that the subject constitutes. As Mukarovský warns, its formal elements also have communicative value, in the same way that the social novel does not abdicate the totality of its formal values in favor of the supreme good of social criticism. It deals with the two sign functions of Mukarovský, in coexistence within each literary sign.

1. 2. Ethics and literature

To approach and understand the moral committment of the narrative examined in this study against the separatist and violent discourse of ETA, it is necessary to consider the nexus between ethics and literature. This association is not unique to modern times. Its origin, since the classic era, the dichotomy docere-delectare, emphasizes the harmony that literature should maintain between its didactic function and character formation (ethos), on the one hand, and the aesthetic pleasure or entertainment, on the other. This has been a dynamic movement, particularly in the field of English Studies, based on the abundant numbers of authors, studies, and collaborations on the subject. In the 21st century, the interest on ethical literature has increased considerably5 but the attention that attracts literature to ethics was not explored earlier as Herbert Grabes notes in his introduction to the collection of essays, Ethics in Culture. The Dissemination of Values through

Literature and Other Media, (2008). In Grabes’ words, “there are investigations of the relation between ethics and literature (what literature can do for ethics or vice versa), and investigations of

5 Wayne Booth, one of the most prominent figures in the study of connections between ethics and literature, notes in 2005: “During the last fifteen years or so, there has been an explosion of interest in questions about the ethical effects of reading literature. Previous to that explosion, there was a grotesque avoidance of such questions” (“Foreword” xi).

31 the relationship between ethics and culture, but these have so far been mostly kept apart” (3). In addition to this topic, scholarship on texts by writers such as John Updike and Flanery O’Connor reflect on their own responsibility as authors.

In the field of Modern Peninsular Studies, María Teresa López de la Vieja has constructed a theory on the intersection between ethics and literature. She points out that after Kant and Hegel,

“la filosofía y en general la cultura contemporánea han seguido la tendencia a separar bien, la belleza y la verdad” (37). López de la Vieja defends that in the dark times that followed the traumatic events of the 20th century in Spain and in Europe (Spanish Civil War and WWII) the urgency of a new reconciliation emerged, and in this context Art in general, and Literature in particular, played a renewed role. Her position is that it was useful for its reflexive use because it offered, “una modalidad de conocimiento indirecto que ayuda a construir experiencias que son relevantes, desde el punto de vista moral y desde el punto de vista politico” (50). López de la

Vieja also points that, “la ética contemporánea tiende a presentarse como un discurso aligerado de referencias al contexto y lo particular” (61). On the other hand, literature depicts cases, particularities, and elucidates the concrete and the real, complementing the ethical discourse.

López de la Vieja argues that “la teoría gana en universalidad lo que pierde en relevancia” (61).

Moreover, the reflexive nature of the ethical discourse seeks a different angle on reality. The ethical discourse found in philosophy postulates what is good and what is not, whereas literature through fiction is adept at inducing a certain behavior. Supporters of this argument include Martha

Nussbaum (85-112) or Wayne Booth, who also believes that literature is capable of forming man by broadening his world (48-79), giving him company, a moral friendship to which he can turn to and seek answers (Company 200-24). The third use, the “expressive”, more intense in literary language, has to do with its capacity for symbolization and the creation of possible worlds, as

32 López de la Vieja asserts, “La Literatura cuenta con medios más refinados que la filosofía para expresar las emociones” (67). Therefore, López de la Vieja defends a new approach to literature from the perspective of ethics, reconciling aesthetic and moral values.

Similarly, in his book Literature and Moral Understanding, Frank Palmer reflects on literature first, and then on morals. Literature is a source of knowledge, and in particular moral knowledge, although this might not be explicit as it is in the case of philosophy. Palmer argues that “it is possible for literature to deepen our moral understanding without giving us information”

(ix). By showing instead of telling, literature simulates a direct knowledge. Palmer reserves this capacity to “good” literature, establishing a direct link between literary aesthetics and moral knowledge. In Palmer’s words, “My argument is that good literary works provide the opportunity for knowledge by acquaintance, and that the educative power of literature is linked with its aesthetic merit” (220). David Parker, in Ethics, Theory, and the Novel, also defends the importance of the canon in the relationship between ethics and literature, specially after the decanonization that Cultural Studies and other movements have imposed on the readings that take place in universities of the Anglo-Saxon world (6).

Before I continue, it might be beneficial to comment on terminology, because ethics and morals appear to designate different things. The first could be reserved as part of philosophy as it deals with moral reflection, while the second one may be reserved for the set of concrete norms, as noted by Fernando Savater in his book Ética para Amador, (2005). In Savater’s words, “Moral es el conjunto de normas que tú, yo y algunos de quienes nos rodean solemos aceptar como válidos;

ética es la reflexión sobre por qué los consideramos válidos y la comparación con otras morales que tienen personas diferentes” (69). Nonetheless, the distinction may be problematic as noted by philosopher R.S. Downie in his article “Ethics, moral and moral philosophy”:

Ethics and morality are terms used as synonyms: an ethical issue just is a moral issue.

Increasingly however, the term “ethics” is being used to apply to specialized areas of

morality such as medicine, business, the environment, and so on. Where professions are

involved, a governing body will typically draw up a code of ethics for its members.

Ethics in this sense can be thought of as a subset of morality, being that aspect of

morality concerning with aspects pertaining to the practice of a profession. Some

philosophers such as Socrates and Bernard William use the term ethic in a very general

sense to refer to the reflective answers that could be given to the question, “How should

we live our lives? (33-34)

Martha Nussbaum prefers the use of the term moral and supports the civic function of literature for democratic societies, because, “arts cultivate the capacity of judgment and sensibility that can and ought to express in the options of the citizens” (118). Nussbaum assumes a critical position, specifically “liberal and democratic” (136). Narratives educate citizens in democratic values such as tolerance and respect for different people, thanks to that characteristic pointed out by Aristotle in chapter 9 of his Poetics, and that Nussbaum brings up, according to which the literature portrays “not the things that have happened but those that could happen”. That is to say, thanks to the imaginative fictions, “if one cannot change races, at least one may imagine what it feels like to be of another race” (125). It is, in fact, the imagination that possesses a greater enlightening power. In the words of Nussbaum, “The narrative imagination constitutes an essential preparation for moral interaction” (123). The literary imagination cultivates key values in democratic societies such as compassion, since “it inspires an intense concern for the destiny of

34 the characters” (123). Further, she argues that literary imagination should not always function in an empathic way, but rather “it should disturb us” (132). Feeling with the characters does not always have moral value. Moreover, Booth proposes that the greatest inspiration is obtained by combining two attitudes: “empathic reading and critical reading should go hand in hand” (136).

Nussbaum rejects a strictly formalistic and detached reading of the works because behind its apparent nonpolitical nature, she finds a static stance and a lack of moral commitment by those who thus study literature (136-42). On the other hand, a “frank debate on the moral content of art has been the raw material of the Western tradition, both in philosophy and in literature” (143). In addition, Nussbaum points out that in Ancient Greece there was no distinction between form and value. Literary artifices were considered in themselves “bearers of a moral content” (127). This aesthetic responsibility involved or amounted, therefore, to an ethical and civic responsibility.

Booth, in The Company We Keep, develops the idea that the meeting between the author and the reader is fundamentally ethical, because it is the meeting between two characters. Literary works, and even narratives, offer their companionship. For the expression of this idea the author uses the metaphor of friendship: “For our purposes, all stories, even those modern novels that use elaborate distancing tricks to subvert realism and prevent identification, can be viewed not as puzzles or even as games but as companions, friends, or if that seems to push the metaphor too far, as gifts from would-be friends” (Company 175). Every friendship is valued and selected in relation to what it provides, for example, goodness, pleasure, and happiness. In the words of Booth,

“Except when we are off-guard we accept the companionship only of those who persuade us that their offerings are the genuine goods” (177). With that figurative meaning, readers accept a work in terms of certain features that Booth names: quantity/concision, related with significant extension of the work (182); reciprocity / hierarchy, referring to the way authors treat their readers: inferiors,

35 equals or superior (184); intimacy/cool reserve, variable referring to the psychological depth an implicit author creates (187); intensity/slack , referring to the degree to which the readers are involved (191); tight coherence / explosive disunity, deals with the internal harmony of the work

(193); otherness/ familiarity, related with strangeness or familiarity of the universe the author offers (194); finally, breath or range/concentration: “fictions differ radically in the scope of the worlds they offer us” (195), referring to the pretentiousness or confusion of the universe offered, against the triviality, dogmatism, or tendentiousness of others. Michael Eskin also describes the similarities between these two discourses. He poses the question:

What do literature and moral philosophy have in common? Whatever else they may

share, there are two traits in particular that are central to the present discussion: (1) both

are fundamentally concerned with the variegated domain of what could be called,

formulaically, the human person in all of its relations, facets, and intricacies; (2) both are

... secondary speech genres. (585)

The first trait refers to everything related to the human being that speaks, chooses, loves and hates things (588); the second one is based on the genealogy of the discourses proposed by Mikhail M.

Bakhtin, who differentiates between primary discourses, constituted by immediate communication

(dialogues, letters) and secondary ones, constituted by novels, plays, scientific treatises, outcome of mediate and complex communication (Aesthetics 248-93). Eskin concludes that ethics and literature need each other. On the one hand, “ethics needs literature - its metalinguistic and thematic sibling - to be fully integrated into the human and the social domain that it is ultimately concerned with” (588). On the other hand, “literature needs ethics because it contributes an explicit

36 rationality and the imposition of an epistemological order over the unpredictable reality” (588).

Geoffrey Galt Harpham goes further and considers ethics as a factor of unity and cohesion among different discourses:

My presumption throughout is that ethics is not properly understood as an ultimate

coherent set of concepts, rules or principles - that it ought not even be a truly distinctive

discourse - but rather that it is best conceived as a factor of “imperativity” immanent in,

but not confined to the practices of language, analysis, narrative, and creation …

Popularly identified with exclusion, ethics can, I believe, also be construed as a

principle of commonality between practices and discourses often considered to be

independent both from each other and from the world of action. (5)

In this dissertation, I will resort to Zachary Newton’s theories to examine Etxenike’s novel El

ángulo ciego. Newton’s narrative of ethics theory is based on Emmanuel Levinas’ thoughts and his ethics of the “other”. Newton centers his theory on the relationships between ethics and narrative. In Newton’s words, “Narrative situations create an immediacy and force, framing relations of provocation, call and response that bind narrator and listener, author and character, or reader and text” (13). That is to say, it is not a matter of narrative being a mere compound of moral values. His theory, which he summarizes under the label of narrative ethics, is broken down into three main ideas, which comprises the relationships that narrative and ethics maintain in three stages:

(1) a narrational ethics (in this case, signifying the exigent conditions and consequences

of the narrative act itself); (2) a representational ethics (the costs incurred in fictionalizing

37 oneself or others by exchanging “person” for “character”); and (3) a hermeneutic ethics

(the ethico-critical accountability which acts of reading hold their readers to). (18)

For Newton, and this is part of his merit in studies of literary ethics, it is about finding the intimate and formal connections of narrative and ethics, what is to be understood as “narrative as ethics”.

In this light, the novels being examined here constitute examples of narrative as ethics, that is, of an ethic perfectly assembled in the narrative of the novels.

1. 3. Terrorism and literature

1. 3. 1. The concept of terrorism. Global terrorism and terrorism in Spain

Terrorism is such a complex social and historical reality, that it is difficult to find a satisfactory definition (Schmid and Jongman 32-28). In fact, many studies of the phenomenon begin with cautious methodologies with respect to the concept. Angela Thurmond notes that reasons of political and emotional interest make it difficult to fix (8). Francisco Alonso-Fernández offers a comprehensive definition, “toda actividad criminal organizada, que produce actos de violencia física con miras a intimidar a un sector de la población, con la finalidad de obtener ventajas políticas, económicas, religiosas y/o nacionalistas” (31). This definition has the advantage of encompassing both non-state and state organizations, whose practices do not differ much from each other. Julio Caro Baroja observes that “parece claro que se va divulgando en función de la historia de la Revolución francesa y del período llamado del Terror (La Terreur) … que acaba con la caída de Robespierre” (19). Thurmond examines the phenomenon on the basis of the three moral concepts of “Justification, Lack of Responsibility and Excuse” (25). Paul Gilbert explains that the definitions that allow to describe the phenomenon as morally perverse have two orientations. On

38 the one hand, it is repudiated, not because it produces terror, but because it produces it without legal legitimacy (1088). On the other hand, other methodologies describe it as morally perverse for the same reasons that they describe any violent crime as morally perverse” (1089). Stephen

Nathanson conducts a moral evaluation of terrorism and aims to provide a unique answer to two different questions: “What makes terrorism so terribly wrong? Why do people condemn terrorist acts with a special vehemence?” (30). Because the ethical problem lies precisely in the fact that the second question involves psychological and subjective responses in people, necessarily variables, what for some is terrorism, may not be for others.

Nathanson begins with three conditions or definitions of terrorist acts: “They are acts of serious, deliberate violence or destruction” (31); “They are acts committed as part of a campaign to promote a political or social agenda” (32); “These acts generally target limited numbers of people, but aim to influence a larger group and/or the leaders who make decisions for the group”

(33). These three conditions failed because other phenomena meet those conditions without being morally reprehensible as in the case of legitimate defense. Nathanson’s fourth condition or definition of terrorist attacks is “the idea that terrorist acts intentionally kill or injure innocent people or pose a serious threat of such harms to innocent people” (33). With respect to the fourth condition Nathanson reiterates:

Condition 4, then, appears to identify the heart of the matter. It provides answers to two

central questions: What makes terrorism wrong? And, why do people condemn terrorism

so vehemently? We can answer both questions if we a) define “terrorism” as always

involving the intentional killing and injuring of innocent people, and b) accept the belief

that intentionally killing innocent people is always wrong. (34)

For its part, all terrorism has a justifying discourse that protects its crimes. This is what Walter

Laqueur, in his indispensable work A History of Terrorism (1977), calls “the philosophy of the bomb”. The doctrinal origins of the philosophy of the bomb emerged in the 19th century, but its antecedents predate the invention of modern explosives. Terrorism has always been justified as a means of opposing despotism and, in this sense, its origins must of course be found in ancient times (Laqueur 55). Plato, Aristotle, Cicero or Seneca justified the murder of tyrants (Laqueur

55). The terrorist movements have been mainly supported by people belonging to the educated middle classes, but also there has been agrarian terrorism, terror practiced by the uprooted and the rejected, and terror practiced by the unions and the working class (Laqueur 126). Apart from its moral evaluation, and the sociological causes that determine its appearance, there is a utilitarian6 analysis (Nielsen 49) of the phenomenon, a form of understanding that only attends to the result and to the satisfaction of its objectives. Therefore, to the question “Is terrorism effective?” Laqueur replies:

Considered with historical perspective, terrorism has only been effective in very

specific circumstances. It has not succeeded against efficient dictatorships, not to

mention its failure against modern totalitarian regimes ... past experience shows that

terrorism often occurs where there are other non-violent political alternatives. In cases

6 The justifications of terrorism, whether utilitarian, or based on their own moral code, have always been seen as an excuse for violence. See The No-nonsense of terrorism, by Jonathan Barker, or The morality of terrorism, by David C. Rapoport.

40 where terrorism could be justified as ultima ratio, as it happens when faced with a

totalitarian government, it has no chance of succeeding. And where it seems to triumph,

the political results are, in the long term, counterproductive. Terrorism always attracts a

lot of publicity, but its political impact is very often in a relationship inversely

proportional to the attention it elicits in the media. However, it is possible that

terrorists are motivated by a thirst for action rather than rational consideration of the

consequences, and there is no reason to suppose past failures may be dissuasive in the

future. (174)

It may be argued that terrorism begins with human history. At the beginning of our era, the sicarii were an ultranationalist and anti-Roman religious sect that acted against the occupation of

Palestine. Around the 11th century, in the geographical area of Iran and Syria, the sect of the

Hashshashin (from which the term “murderer” originates) appeared. It has already been mentioned that the key moment of the Reign of Terror, which followed the French Revolution, and led to the definitive coining of the term terrorism, appeared in Dictionaire de la Académie Française.

However, it was not until the mid 19th century when organizations began to emerge that would allow us to understand contemporary terrorism (Burleigh 11). The terrorist organizations in the world are clasiffied by Burleigh around large areas, all of them in Western context (it does not address terrorism in Latin America, Asia or Africa): the Russian nihilists, the anarchists, the

Algerian FLN and other groups that emerged in light of decolonization, the Red Brigades in Italy, the IRA in Northern Ireland, ETA in Spain and, of course, Islamist terrorism, with Al-Qaeda 7.

7 Burleigh exclusively makes an account of the facts, people and circumstances, but deliberately avoids any ideological or sociological analysis.

41 This last form of terrorism, of enormous complexity, is responsible for the worst terrorist attack in

Western history that took place in New York on September 11, 2001. The historical moment marks a point of inflexion on many scopes, but certifies the globalization of terror, with an organization,

Al-Qaeda, which is nothing more than an international network of smaller groups with bases in different countries, but all with the support of a religious fanaticism and enraged rejection of western civilization. The French writer and philosopher, André Glucksmann, in Dostoievski en

Manhattan, refers to September 11, as the most recent and spectacular exhibition of nihilism8, a sort of universal archetype of terror that has manifested itself both in state terrorism and in the most diverse organizations. His essay, of great impact, intersects with the commentary of great works of universal literature, because Dostoevsky also sensed the essential horror of nihilism when he published The Demons. Glucksmann declares:

Un fantasma recorre el planeta: el fantasma del nihilismo. Utiliza antiguas religiones,

abusa de antiguas ideologías y de exaltaciones comunitarias, pero no las respeta.

Reivindica la transgresión como signo de su elección. La secta terrorista de los “asesinos”

mataba tanto a los jefes musulmanes como a los cruzados cristianos. Operaba sin respetar

las normas y contra los usos, por encima del bien y del mal. Sean o no religiosos, los

nihilistas practican una doble ruptura: con el mundo “enemigo”, y con la comunidad

“amiga”, a la que pretenden regenerar a la fuerza. Cavan así en cada cultura el abismo al

8 See a study on the relationship between nihilism and terrorism Nihilismo y terrorismo edited by the Spanish Institute of Strategic Studies (IEEE).www.ieee.es/en/Galerias/fichero/cuadernos/CE-124.pdf.

42 que precipitan a los otros, y a veces a sí mismos, bajo la enseña nihilista del no hay nada

que perder, ni nada que salvar. (41)

In Spain, the first terrorist manifestations take place in the 19th century are of anarchist nature. In the south, the so-called Mano Negra group appeared, whose real condition and existence still bears some doubts, as there were suspicions that it constituted an invention of the authorities to enable the repression. Caro Baroja observes that “La Mano Negra queda en la serie de enigmas históricos no aclarados” (73). Javier Tusell identifies this organization in its historical context:

During the summer of 1882 Andalusia had witnessed a serious subsistence crisis. At

this moment the discovery took place, on the part of the authorities, of a secret

organization of subversive character that would have assassinated some of its members.

In the summer of 1883 those involved in this organization were tried and eight of them

were sentenced to death. (176)

In the late 19th century anarchism gained strength at the expense of a weak socialism. The anarcho- communists were more incline to violence, while anarcho-collectivists preferred the actions of the unions (Tusell 193). The first antiterrorist laws were passed after the attacks against General

Martínez Campos and the Liceo (1893) and against the Corpus Christi procession (1896). It was a decade of great social upheaval, which had begun with the street celebration of May Day by proletarian organizations and the fear of the wealthy classes, who took refuge in their country estates. Although the celebrations turned into a party, “for a considerable section of public opinion it [the 1890s] retained a notable degree of drama, particularly since it was linked to the important

43 miners’ strike in Bilbao, in 1892 and 1894, and to anarchist terrorist attempts in Barcelona, in

1892-1897” (Álvarez Junco 72). The repression that took place in Barcelona, where violence had drifted from Andalucia (Tusell 193), was brutal and the use of torture in Montjuich (Barcelona) arose intellectual opposition from exiles and leftist organizations in Europe.

During Franco’s dictatorship and the Democracy years, the most important terrorist organization was, without a doubt, ETA. However, it was not the only one. There were other organizations, especially during the 1960s, and 1970s. This increase in activities coincided with a parallel growth at the international level such as the Red Brigades in Italy and the Baader-Meinhof

Group in Germany. Alejandro Muñoz Alonso points out that leftism terrorism in Spain was primarily Marxism-Leninism (34). Among these he mentions the FRAP (Antifascist and Patriotic

Revolutionary Front), established in 1974, and especially the GRAPO9 (Antifascist Resistance

Groups October 2), of Maoist ideology (Muñoz 35-6), and linked to the Communist Party of Spain.

In the middle of the Transition years the GRAPO kidnapped the President of the Council of State and the President of the Supreme Council of Military Justice, causing a serious risk to the process towards democracy (Tusell 514). There were other groups which were active mainly in Catalonia:

MIL (Movimiento Ibérico de Liberación), the OLLA (Organization of Lluita Armada), and Terra

Lliure. Along with these groups on the left there was also extreme right-wing terrorism. Muñoz highlights the paradox of this tendency, in the context of a fascist dictatorship (38), but its founding arises from “una cierta pureza doctrinal traicionada” (39). The most notorious group was the

Guerrilleros de Cristo Rey (GCR), which carried out attacks against bookstores, art galleries and any other places where activities considered “liberal” or “progressive” took place. There were

9 GRAPO was considered dismantled on 2011.

44 other organizations (Cruz Ibérica, Batallón Vasco-Español), and many of them maintained contacts with the so-called International Negra, “que asociaba terroristas de ultraderecha de Italia o Alemania (de inspiracion neo-nazi)” (Muñoz 39). In Spain, there has also been state terrorism.

Between 1983 and 1987, when Spain was finally a democratic state, emerged “un antiterrorismo irregular (los Grupos antiterroristas de Liberación o GAL) que utilizó procedimientos parecidos a los de ETA para eliminar a los supuestos o reales miembros de la organización en territorio francés” (Tusell 556). Subsequent judicial investigations certified the financing of their crimes with public money from the Ministry of the Interior, in addition to the participation of senior police officers. In 1996 José Barrionuevo, Minister of Interior and Rafael Vera, Secretary of State for

Security were found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison for their involvement in the “dirty war” against ETA.

Among these groups ETA stands out, the most notorious terrorist organization in the history of Spain. ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna), that is to say, “Basque Country and freedom”, was founded at the end of the 1950s by a group of young activists involved in the resistance of Franco’s dictatorship. On July 31, 195910 a group of radical students dissenter of the EKIN collective - established in 1952 to react against the passivity of the PNV (Basque Nationalist Party) - founded

Euskadi Ta Askatasuna. This was the birth of ETA, an ideological alternative to the postulates of the PNV with four basic pillars: the defense of the Basque language; ethnicism (as the overcoming phase of racism); anti-Spanish sentiment; and the independence of the seven historic territories that, they claimed, belong to Euskadi: Álava, Vizcaya, Guipúzcoa, Navarra (in Spain), Lapurdi,

Baja Navarra and Zuberoa (in France). The history of ETA is long: more than five decades of

10 See La dictadura del terror. www.elmundo.es/eta/historia/index.html.

45 violence ended in the recent announcement of the definitive cessation of the armed struggle and the disarmament of the band11. In these fifty years, the terrorist organization murdered 857 people

(Rogelio Alonso et al. 1226), kidnapped 77, and wounded thousands, physically as well as psychologically, in the Basque Country and the rest of Spain12.

During the dictatorship, according to Antonio Elorza, the appearance of ETA cannot be understood without taking into account Basque nationalism and Franco’s efforts to eradicate any trace of cultural difference as outlined by Elorza:

In the Basque case, state repression had only served to bring to the fore a radical form

of nationalism in the shape of ETA, employing terroristic methods, diametrically opposed

to the political passivity of the PNV. Indeed, ETA came into being as the response of

young Basques at the PNV’s seemingly complacent policy of binding its time.

(“Some perspectives” 332)

Carolyn P. Boyd also highlights this relation. She stresses how in “relentless pursuit of the Basque nationalist terrorist organization, ETA, created a receptive climate for the emergency of a more broadly based Basque Nationalist movement” (101). In fact, ETA campaigned for the independence of the Basque Country, based upon the ideas of the founder of Basque nationalism,

11 ETA announced the “cese definitivo de su actividad armada” on two separate communications published on the newspapaers Gara y Berria on October 2011. On April 2017, ETA announced and agreement to disarm on a letter sent to BBC, declaring ETA is now “desarmada”.

12 See Vidas rotas: Historia de los hombres, mujeres y niños víctimas de ETA, written by Rogelio Alonso, Florencio Domínguez, and Marcos García in which they write the stories of every single victim of ETA.

46 Sabino Arana, in the 19th century13. José María Garmendía refers to the central slogan most admired and used by ETA during their first years, “Euzkadi es la patria de los vascos” (98).

Although the ideology of the organization evolved, it has always maintained the principle of the independence of the Basque territory. Parallel to the evolution of ETA is not only the evolution of the history of Spain (from dictatorship to democracy), but also the consciousness of Basque society itself. During the repression, the criminal activity of ETA found a considerable support within

Basque society (and in many anti-Francoist sectors of the rest of Spain), which saw in its members, fighters against the dictatorship. According to Elorza, “The sheer immensity of the state repression at its height (1965-75) legitimized ETA and its violent counter-response in the eyes of very large sectors of Basque society which, through a kind of collective complicity, provided a very real social support base” (“Some perspectives” 333). However, the arrival of democracy, after the death of Franco in 1975, forced an ideological transition that would try to legitimaze its attacks against a system that already granted the Basque Country a large part of the traditional claims of nationalism, except total independence from Spain. Silver outlines how ETA transitioned:

The radical Basque movement was forced to develop a distinct nationalist coloration of

its own. Thus, from the fading memory of ETA’s armed resistance to Franco, and from

elements of Sabino Arana’s original Nationalist creed, the Basque nationalists pieced

together a radical nationalist identity. This featured a new anti-colonial version of

Arana’s fierce anti-Spain posture, and an insistence that the Basque language and the

13 Jon Juaristi, writes on El bucle melancólico: historias de nacionalistas vascos (1997) that Basque nationalism has been nurtured from a spiral of myths, leyends and rumors about a nation that does not exists, unlike Ireland. Sabino Arana is responsible for that “imagined “history.

47 Basque nation were consubstantial, which automatically excluded the majority of the

population that spoke little or no Euskara. (62)

According to Elorza, this exclusion of the “others” is the base of the xenophobic, racist and conservative ideology of Sabino Arana (“Introduction” 42-47), and has marked the rhetoric of rejection in the radical nationalist world, not only of the Spanish but also of Basques who do not necessarily identify with the nationalist cause, as summarized by Silver, “Thus, ETA and Herri

Batasuna [political branch of ETA] became the endogamic nucleus of a grass-roots movement that demanded ... independence from both France and Spain and that articulated the unintelligible notion that present-day Euskadi was a country occupied by two foreign powers” (Silver 62).

The definitive consolidation of democracy, in the eighties, and especially after the failure of General Francisco Tejero’s military coup d’état in 1981, did not result in the disappearance of

ETA. The band continued killing, kidnapping and extorting until recently, when domestic and international pressure forced the terrorists to declare a cease of their activities. The loss of the social support that had sustained it during Franco’s regime, especially because of the ‘error’ in evaluating certain crimes, contributed to ETA’s weakening. Although all warrant mention, the attack on Hipercor in 1987, in which 21 people died and 45 were injured, the kidnapping of José

Antonio Ortega Lara, and the assassination of Miguel Ángel Blanco in 1997 significantly decreased social collaboration, although without affecting the criminal logic of ETA (Domínguez

Iribarren 397). ETA continued its agenda until the terrorists announced the cessation of armed

48 activities in October 201114. On April 8, 2018, ETA issued an apology to the victims of decades of violence:

Hemos provocado mucho dolor, incluidos muchos daños que no tienen solución.

Queremos mostrar respeto a los muertos, los heridos y las víctimas que han causado las

acciones de ETA, en la medida que han resultado damnificados por el conflicto. Lo

sentimos de veras. A consecuencia de errores o de decisiones erróneas, ETA ha

provocado también víctimas que no tenían una participación directa en el conflicto, tanto

en Euskal Herria como fuera de ella ...También hemos provocado graves daños que no

tienen vuelta atrás. A estas personas y a sus familiares les pedimos perdón. Estas

palabras no solucionarán lo sucedido, ni mitigarán tanto dolor. Lo decimos con

respeto, sin querer provocar de nuevo aflicción alguna. (El País, 20 April 2018)

In their communiqué, ETA differentiated between two types of victims, those “ajenos al conflicto y los que no lo eran”. The distinction caused uproar and indignation among victims and families of victims. Special mention deserves the greatest terrorist attack in the history of Spain, which occurred on March 11, 2004, three days before the General Elections. Jihadist terrorists blew up a series of bombs on commuter trains in Madrid. 191 died and more than 1,800 were injured.

Although at the beginning the crime was attributed to ETA, it was later determined that the carnage

14 ETA’s activities, their nationalist demands, and he problematic of how it fits in the whole of Spain shape what has been called “el caso vasco”. See following articles, Cómo hemos llegado a esto: la crisis vasca, by José Luis Barbería, or “Sentimiento y (sin)razón política: reflexiones sobre el caso vasco”, by Annabel Marín.

49 was an act of Islamists. Two weeks later, the police cornered a group of terrorists in an apartment in Leganés, a town near Madrid, who killed themselves before being arrested. During the days after the attack, but more especially on March 11, 12 and 13, there was great social upheaval.

Nicholas Manganas has studied the events that took place those days by means of a discursive approach. For Manganas, the attacks transformed for a few days the democratic national identity shaped during the Transition dividing Spaniards between those who attributed the attacks to ETA and those who blamed Islamic terrorism. Although he perhaps goes too far, Manganas is correct in pointing out the fact that terror, especially that infused by indiscriminate Islamist terrorism, achieves a large-scale, social-scale objective. He reiterates that “The March 11 attacks offer us considerable insight into the representation of humanity in an age of terror by demonstrating that after the initial moments of unity, togetherness, and empathy with the victims, the function of terror in post 3/11 Spain destabilized long-tanding national narratives. History does not always have reason, purpose, and direction” (13).

Carlos Javier García, in his book Tres días que conmovieron España (2008), studies how this division manifested itself in the media, especially in the press and on the radio and how it affected the collective process of mourning, which was delayed and altered. In contrast to the unity of discourse that emerged after the 9/11 attacks in New York, Garcia observes how in Spain:

El esquema narrativo colectivo no es unitario y su carácter fragmentario se hace visible en

las interpretaciones de lo ocurrido, sobre todo cuando se aplican esquemas

políticos. El valor simbólico asignado a los muertos no se integra en la memoria

colectiva, sino que se fragmenta en múltiples historias cuyos relatos se vinculan a la

interpretación política de lo ocurrido ... El esquema narrativo se configura abiertamente

50 en términos políticos: las elecciones son tres días después y, por lo tanto, inmediatamente

se pone en marcha una maquinaria retórica encaminada a producir valoraciones e

interpretaciones políticas que incidan en los resultados de las elecciones. (31)

1. 3. 2. Terrorism and literature

Studies on terrorism and literature are still not entirely developed, despite the benefits that literature can provide. Walter Laqueur argues that fiction helps us understand the phenomenon of terrorism more so than political science (210). In the field of Western literature there are two classic works on the topic: Fiodor Dostoyevsky’s Demons (1872) and Joseph Conrad's The Secret

Agent (1907). Although other works address the issue, none of them reach the literary height of

Dostoyevsky and Conrad, while treating terrorism as the main theme of their work. What this means is that, within the canon of great literature, terrorism has not been a frequent issue, despite the scale of the phenomenon during the 19th and early 20th centuries. On the other hand, the relationship between literature and terrorism can be established beyond the theme of the narrative genre. Anthony Kubiak proposes a typology for this relationship. In the first place are the narratives written by the terrorists themselves, what Kubiak refers to as “Writings which set out to explain the ideological ground of terrorist acts (ranging from spiritual faith, to political action, to nihilism)”. Kubiak distinguishes two more modalities:

The second terrorist narrative I would suggest would be narratives about terrorism and

thirdly, those forms of writing that we might, in the spirit of critical excess, describe as

narrative terrorism: attempts to destabilize narrativity itself-disrupting linearity,

51 temporality, plot, character or whatever conventions may be regarded as essential to the

productions of stories, memories, dramas, or histories. (295-6)

The typology proposed by Kubiak is an example of the critical hesitation and moral confusion of academic studies on terrorism, particularly in its terminological assimilation of real terrorism that causes death and pain and the formal experimentalism of literature. Such a critical tendency is responsible for the famous study by Margaret Scanlan, Plotting Terror: Novelists and Terrorists in Contemporary Fiction (2001), in which the author establishes an analogy between novelists and terrorists, according to which, terrorists rival novelists with their “revolutionary” attitude. This analogy entails a dangerous consequence, that of seeing terrorism as fiction, just as reflected in the book. Scanlan establishes the similarity between terrorists and writers:

Writers and terrorists encounter each other, resuming a motif of the writer as terrorist’s

victim, rival, or double, which first appears in Dostoyevsky’s Demons, James’s The

Princess Casamassima, and Conrad’s Under Western Eyes ... I see both writers and

terrorists in these novels as remnants of a romantic belief in the power of marginalized

persons to transform history ... As heirs to the revolutionaries of 1776 and 1789 and

1848, terrorists retain their traditional affinity to writers. (1-2, 6)

This thesis, which starts from the study, in the first chapter of Scanlan’s work, of the novel Mao II

(1991), by the American novelist Don de Lillo, is sharply criticized by Frans Van den Broek.

Van den Brock argues that:

52 Porque la crítica se ha cebado con fruición casi erótica en la comparación planteada del

novelista y el terrorista, espulgando todas las facetas posibles de esta vinculación: el

poder subversivo del discurso artístico frente al poder establecido; el novelista como

terrorista de las formas narrativas tradicionales, a las que violenta y disloca; la

performatividad del acto terrorista y del acto creativo; el novelista y el terrorista

difuminando límites entre lo público y lo privado, la subjetividad y la objetividad o el

cuerpo y la conciencia. (54)

Alex Houden in his book Terrorism and Modern Literature: From Joseph Conrad to Ciaran

Carson (2002), focuses his interest in a century, which goes from 1880 to 1980. For the author, literature is an essential discourse that adds to the studies on terrorism: “In attempting to trace the complex dynamics of terrorism, there is much to be learned from the examinations of it from within literature itself” (18). The objective of the author, when studying not only the works of Conrad,

Ezra Pound or Walter Abish, but also his reflections on terrorism, is as follows, “By analyzing how different literary writers have responded to specific instances of terrorism in the twentieth century, I shall thus be aiming to offer a more adequate account of terrorism’s figurative aspects, at the same time as asking to what degree these literary responses have meant trying to refashion the force of literature itself” (18).

The studies on literature and terrorism, which are still in their infancy, do not focus only on narrative. John Orr and Dragan Klaic have published a collection of interesting articles on terrorism in theater, Terrorism and Modern Drama (1990). Within the collection, Daniel Gerould makes an historical review on the topic from the Renaissance theater, in the era of the terror of the

Tudor tyranny, until the 20th century. Gerould discusses the richness of the theatrical genre:

53 The jarring conjunction of seeming opposites has elicited ambivalent responses in

playwrights attracted by the paradox of the executioner and his allies - the policeman,

spy informer, secret agent - as the defender of the culture. Revelation of the face of terror

beneath the mask of civilization is a theatrical moment of disturbing power, whether the

dramatist exults in the power, apologizes for it, or laments it. (15)

Notwithstanding the anthropological notion of terror on which Gerould relies, always present in history, it is not until the 19th century when terrorism acquires the social importance and configuration it holds in contemporary history (Burleigh 11). Therefore, most studies have focused on the literature since this period. The kind of terrorism that appears in these first texts is, therefore, of nihilistic and anarchist type.

Demons (1872) by Dostoyevsky, is based on the real story of an attack committed in

Moscow in 1869, inside a terrorist cell. Stavrogin, the central character of the novel, is an anarchist disciple of Bakunin. The Secret Agent (1907), by Joseph Conrad, is a political novel inspired by anarchist activities, as the author states in a note that opens the novel. Its subject “came to me in the shape of a few words uttered by a friend in a casual conversation about anarchists or rather anarchists’ activities” (9). The protagonist, Mr. Verloc, is a member of a group of anarchists. The

Russian embassy, where he works undercover, orders him to perpetrate a bomb attack against the

London Observatory of Greenwich with the objective to discredit Russian revolutionaries in the face of the British government. Conrad returned to the subject of terrorism in Under Western Eyes

(1911), whose protagonist infiltrates a group of Russian revolutionaries in exile. Both Dostoevsky and Conrad fictionalize their contemporary reality, during a time in which nihilist and anarchist terrorists were very active, until the early years of the 20th century. In his survey of universal

54 literature and terrorism, Van Den Broek mentions other titles: The Honorary Consul (1973), by

Graham Green, about the failed kidnapping of a British consul in Paraguay; The Good Terrorist

(1985), by Doris Lessing, that focuses on the life of a young idealist woman who absurdly becomes involved in violent acts; Mao II (1991), by Don De Lillo, in which a Maoist inspired guerrilla appears in Africa; À quoi rêvent les loups/ Wolf dreams (1999), by Yasmina Kadrah, about a young Argelian man who after the cancellation of the 1992 elections, becomes involved in horror of the violence and unprecedented slaughter, corrupted by religious fanaticism; Shalimar the Clown (2005), by Shalman Rushdie, whose protagonist enters the world of terrorism because of jealously, in the conflictive region of Kashmir; and Magic Seeds (2005), by V. S. Naipaul, whose protagonist William Chandran forms part of a guerrilla in India that only preaches destruction.

Despite the diversity of the subject (it includes issues such as death, freedom, human dignity, the ideal, corruption, or violence), terrorism is relatively uncommon in literature. In Spain, the history of the novel and terrorism has followed a very similar evolution, parallel to the history of terror, from the anarchist period between the 19th and 20th centuries, until the March 11, Islamist attacks in Madrid. A precursor of the genre La deshederada (1881), by Benito Pérez Galdós, features a scene where Mariano Rufete, a disturbed soul, and brother of the protagonist Isidora, attemps to assassinate King Alfonso XII during a royal procession in the streets of Madrid.

Encouraged and manipulated by the discourse of typographer Juan Bau, the young man has incorporated Bou’s incitement to violence into his way of reasoning. The narrator reveals how

Mariano in a frenzy tries to carry out the attack, “En el acto sacó de debajo de la blusa una pistola vieja, y apuntando con mano no muy firme, salió el tiro con fugaz estruendo” (II, XVI).

Considered the first landmark example is Aurora Roja (1905), by Pío Baroja, third part of the

55 trilogy La lucha por la vida, about the activities of an anarchist group in Madrid. In the words of

Nil Santiáñez, “The latter trilogy describes a Madrid steeped in misery, a mixture of picaresque life and revolutionary conspiracy, almost always of an anarchist bent” (491). Susana Sueiro Seoane reviews the presence of anarchist terrorism in Spanish literature, mainly in novels by Vicente

Blasco Ibáñez, Pío Baroja and Ramón Valle-Inclán. According to Sueiro, Baroja’s novel is a reflection of the author’s opinion on anarchism: “Baroja no confía tampoco en el anarquismo como teoría social, sólo simpatiza con el anarquismo en su dimensión libertaria, individualista, como teoría para transformar al individuo haciéndole espiritualmente más libre” (56). In fact, Juan’s profile, the terrorist of Aurora roja, is an idealization: he appears to reject the mediocre, even miserable reality of Madrid at that time. The character is inspired in Mateo Morral, an intellectual anarchist who assiduously attended the literary gatherings of Baroja, Azorín or Valle-Inclán, and that on May 31, 1906, the day of the wedding of Alfonso XIII and Victoria Eugenia de Battenberg,

“arrojó desde un balcón una bomba Orsini, similar a la del Liceo de 1893, oculta en un ramo de flores. Los reyes resultaron ilesos, pero la explosión provocó una masacre entre la multitud que vitoreaba a la pareja real: hubo veintitrés muertos y más de cien heridos” (Sueiro 58). Baroja dedicated another novel, La dama errante (1908), to the circumstances after the death of Morral, who committed suicide, and whose corpse was viewed and visited by many writers in the hospital morgue. Valle Inclán composed a poem, “Rosa de llamas”, depicting this terrorist as a hero facing his fate in the moments before the attack. In the famous episode of the cell of Luces de bohemia, in which Max Estrella talks to a Catalan prisoner who is going to be executed, and who represents freedom and the struggle for an ideal, the prisoner bears the name of Mateo, in homage to the real terrorist. Blasco Ibáñez dealt with the subject of anarchism in Los fanáticos (1895), La catedral

(1903) and especially in La bodega (1905), where he portrays the situation of oppression in which

56 the day laborers of Andalusia lived. Popular frustration unleashed and the mob ravaged the city of

Jerez, an event that led to harsh police repression. The novel features Mano negra, a secret terrorist organization whose existence seems a subterfuge of the repressive spirit of the state. The main character in the novel, Fermín Salvatierra, is based on Fermín Salvochea, “mítico anarquista de acción, gran apóstol de la idea, revolucionario mesiánico” (Sueiro 47). Nonetheless, Blasco Ibáñez was a republican and wanted to attract the favor of the peasant anger, whose disorganized and brutal anarchy he disapproved. Sueiro observes how Blasco Ibáñez “describe a una muchedumbre ilusa, inepta y sin coordinación, incapaz de organizar una protesta de manera eficiente; una horda de hombres toscos, algunos movidos por instintos bestiales” (46). In sum, the virulence of anarchism during those years was notorious enough for prominent writers to use as fictional material, often from a sympathetic and idealizing perspective that still does not see terrorism as a criminal activity.

María Dolores Alonso Rey makes an extensive review on the image of the terrorist in the contemporary novel. Alonso Rey also warns “la escasez de estudios sobre el asunto” (326) in the field of arts, and establishes a corpus divided by different criteria - the history of terrorism or narrative subgenres - and composed of seventeen novels, from Tomás Salvador’s, El atentado

(1960) to Alfonso Rojo, Matar para vivir (2002)15.

15 Tomás Salvador, El atentado (1960); Eduardo Mendoza, La verdad sobre el caso Savolta (1975);Raúl Guerra Garrido, Lectura insólita de El Capital (1976) y La costumbre de morir (1981); Ricardo Lechuga, Nubarrones (1979); Manuel Villar Raso, Comandos vascos (1980); Cristóbal Zaragoza, Y Dios en la última playa (1981); Leopoldo Azancot, La noche española (1981); Mario Onaindia, Grande Place (1982); Jorge M. Reverte, El mensajero (1982) y Gudari Gálvez (2005); Fernando Martínez Laínez, Destruyan a Anderson (1983);).Eugenio Ibarzábal, La trampa (1987); Azahara Larra Servet, Extranjeros en su país (1992); Jesús Cacho, Kilómetro cero (1996); José Manuel Fajardo, Una belleza convulsa (2001); Alfonso Rojo, Matar para vivir (2002).

57 Alonso Rey observes that “un buen número de ellas se emparentan con la novela negra, modalidad que, junto con la novela-enigma, constituye el popular género de la novela criminal” (326). A recent example is Roberto Montero Glez’s Polvora negra (2008, Premio Azorín), a reconstruction of Mateo Morral’s attack against King Alfonso XIII. In some of the novels, the terrorist appears as the myth of honorable criminal like in Destruyan a Anderson or El extranjero, or he is granted humanity, like in the four anarchists of El atentado (Alonso Rey 327-328). Alonso Rey mentions

La verdad sobre el caso Savolta (1975), de Eduardo Mendoza as a particular case of humanization of the anarchists, “estrechamente relacionados con el mundo obrero, aparecen como un grupo sin fisuras, carecen de espesor humano” (Alonso Rey 329). La verdad is, without a doubt, an important work, beyond the presence of terrorism, because of its role in the history of the Spanish contemporary novel, and the importance of the author. Mendoza made an laborious work of historical documentation with which to portray the tumultuous social reality of Barcelona between

1917 and 1919. The weapon factories that supplied the conflicting powers of the First World War were getting richer thanks to the neutrality of Spain, but they subjected the workers to exploitative conditions that created the breeding ground for, “una Barcelona ensangrentada del terrorismo”

(Sueiro 64). During that period, the Baron of Koenig arrived at Barcelona. In the words of Sueiro he was “un aventurero alemán, vividor, farsante, estafador” (67). Further, Sueiro observes “La banda del varón de Koenig introdujo en Barcelona el veneno del terrorismo blanco” (67).

According to José María Marco, Mendoza models the character of Leprince on Koenig, “deudor de los personajes cinematográficos, guapo, refinado, brutal” (307), and portrays the terrorism exhibited by the establishement, and opresors of the proletariat and their revolts.

Alonso Rey indicates that ETA is portrayed in novels such as Comandos vascos (1980) and Y Dios en la última playa (1981), whose characters appear morally alienated (332). In these

58 novels, it is also relevant the presence of women, who are depicted as the embodiment of “sexo y muerte ... la génesis del terrorista” (Alonso Rey 333, 337). These novels also portray the tension among the male characters and their oedipal rejection of the father and other elements such as indoctrination and training to assassinate. According to Alonso Rey, those elements require the dehumanization of the victim (341). Many other issues, all of them specific to the reality of terrorism, appear in the stories selected in the corpus: the mixed ideology of ETA (Destruyan a

Anderson, El mensajero), the feelings of guilt, the infiltrators, the ex-terrorists, the victims. Alonso

Rey concludes:

Estos diecisiete relatos dan buena cuenta de los mecanismos sociales y psicológicos que

producen terroristas, esto es, sujetos moralmente desconectados ... El terrorista, hombre

o mujer, aparece como un ser aislado, destruido, que se encuentra en un camino sin

retorno, sometido a la organización, abocado a la muerte o a practicar la violencia como

fin en sí mismo. Algunos son seres moralmente escindidos, en lucha íntima, entre la

acción asesina y la reflexión sobre la licitud y el sentido del crimen político.

Paradójicamente, la duda o la culpabilidad los humaniza y agranda su fracaso vital. Esta

íntima disidencia acentúa su imagen de víctima del terror y de la jerarquía a la que sirve.

Coinciden estos relatos en presentar la violencia de unos y otros como una trágica espiral

cuyos motores son el odio y la venganza, cultivados a veces en el seno de la familia.

(352)

Una belleza convulsa (2001), by José Manuel Fajardo, must be mentioned, not only for its literary quality but also for the specific treatment of kidnapping. In this novel, a journalist is kidnapped

59 by an unnamed band - although clearly referred to ETA - and during his stay in a squalid and unsanitary space (zulo), he has time to reflect about himself and the circunstances of the whole situation. This soul searching allows him to confront himself, and to survive confinement and madness. The prisoner establishes an ambivalent relationship with his kidnappers based on suspicion and trust. Another recent novel that has been inspired by terrorist kidnappings is El zulo de los elegidos (2010), by Manuel Villar Raso. The novel Tango de muerte (2008), by Mikel

Azurmendi16 fictionalizes the murder of three young people in 1973 in France, which ETA members confused with civil guards, and whose bodies were never found. More recently, Gabriela

Ybarra published an autobiographical novel El comensal (2015), where the author struggles to come to terms with her grandfather’s death at the hands of ETA in the spring of 1977.

In addition to the authors reviewed by Alonso Rey, I must refer to three Basque authors selected for this study: Luisa Etxenike, Bernardo Atxaga, and Fernando Aramburu whose works will be discussed in the next chapters. Their novels constitute the synthesis of literary quality and moral commitment against terror. The authors offer images of personal tragedies caused by ETA terrorism: the loneliness and marginalization of the victims, the harassment of the families of the murdered, youth indoctrination, and exile.

With regard to the humanization of terrorism, and its relationship with the writer’s commitment, an aspect present in some of the novels cited by Alonso Rey and, before them, in the works of Baroja or Valle-Inclán, it is necessary to make a separate comment. It is a difficult equilibrium in which moral intention and fictionality intervene. That is why the work of the authors

16 Mikel Azurmendi is member of the Foro de Ermua y claims that it was diffcicult to fing a publisher for the novel within the context of ETA’s truce.

60 selected for this study is significant. Humanization and critical judgment are not two exclusive options; on the contrary: an exclusively demonizing portrait runs the risk of incurring a distortion that loses its connection with reality, thus undermining the moralizing value. Elaine Martin studies a series of literary and cinematographic works that, in her opinion, represent a humanization of terrorism. Following the line of Scanlan, Martin understands this humanization as a revolutionary artistic act that does not submit to the official discourse. In reference to the 9/11 attacks in New

York, she writes that “Any effort to understand, explain, or investigate the cause of the attacks was perceived as an attempt at justification” (2). She wonders about “The ubiquity of the humanization of terrorists/terrorist acts in literary and cinematic works” which leads her to formulate the following question: “Is not possible that many people believe that there might be some justification to certain terrorists’ causes?” (2). This type of focus, in which Scanlan’s study is included as well as all literary trends that have followed her model, shows the need to incorporate the ethical dimension into studies on terrorism. In this respect, Haruo Shirane points out that cultural studies cannot ignore the fact that “one of the most important functions of culture is to provide a system of values and norms by which individual people behave themselves in relation to other members of the community” (514). That is to say, cultural studies and, more particularly, studies on terrorism, have the responsibility of integrating the analysis of values and ethical reflection, which reflects the reality of many cultures in contact and coexistence.

61 Chapter II

Luisa Etxenike - El ángulo ciego

Porque ahí nadie te alcanza. Nadie te ve por el retrovisor. Como si estuvieras metido en el ángulo ciego. Como si no pasara nada. (Miren, in El ángulo ciego, 183)

In this chapter, I will examine how the victims of terrorism are portrayed in El ángulo ciego, by Luisa Etxenike. The novel emphasizes the trauma suffered by victims of terrorism, particularly young people who struggle to adjust to life trying to make sense of having survived when others did not. I will posit that in the 21st century, there has been a shift on the narratives written by Basque writers. As discussed in chapter one, the issue of the “Basque conflict” has been addressed by both, authors who write in Baque and those who write in Spanish. There were key historical and social moments when Basque society, even those with nationalist leanings, finally reflected on decades of silence, complicity and acquiescence, condemned all acts of terrorism, and acknowledged the suffering inflicted by the terrorists. I hypothesize that the novel questions the nationalist discourse that was assumed to speak for the Basque people, their language and identity during the years of the dictatorship. In the democratic and autonomous Basque Country, there was no longer room for a tribal discourse based on demagogy, hate and assassinations. Just as societies evolve, so does fiction. Fiction challenges reality and breaks taboos of silence, acceptance and sympathy for the terrorists. The protagonists are not the romanticized and humanized terrorists who after having been wronged by society turn to terrorism and commit murders. Instead, by omitting the explicit terrorist acts, and their message, the writer offers the vision of terrorism from the point of view of the victims. Terrorism is not contextualized, but rather experienced by those

62 who had no choice. Readers participate and become aware of the victims’ fear, guilt, trauma, but they also experience hope, forgiveness and dignity.

2.1. Victims of terrorism: The end of silence

On April 22, 2007, at the Euskalduna Palace in Bilbao, the Lehendakari Juan José Ibarretxe addressed more than a thousand people filling the site, including relatives of victims of ETA terrorism, survivors of attacks, representatives of all political forces (with the exception of the

Popular Party and EHAK), trade union groups, Basque businessmen and various associations of victims of terrorism. Ibarretxe apologized to the relatives of the victims of terrorism, declaring that the day honored “una deuda que queremos saldar de todo corazón”. In his speech, the Lehendakari said that the autonomous government had not treated the victims and their families with the respect they deserved as members of a pluralist and democratic society:

No estuvimos a la altura de las circunstancias como sociedad … las instituciones de este

país hemos manifestado en múltiples ocasiones nuestro compromiso inequívoco con el

derecho a la vida y las libertades. Aún estamos a tiempo de pedir perdón y entonar

un lo siento colectivo…Vamos a asegurarnos de que vuestra memoria permanezca

entre nosotros para siempre. Será el mejor activo en la necesaria deslegitimación de la

violencia. (“Ibarretxe”)

In addition to the Lehendakari’s speech, writer Anjel Lertxundi intervened in the tribute to the victims, as well as Manuela Orantos, widow of the civil guard Avelino Palma. Lertxundi, as a representative of the Basque Country intellectuals questioned the silence of Basque society

63 regarding the victims of violence and their families. “¿Qué nos ha pasado? ¿Quién puede negar los hechos, subestimar la tragedia?”, he asked. In his speech Lertxundi repudiated terrorist violence as a mechanism to achieve political ends:

Por más que intentemos desentendernos, la conciencia, persistente, tenaz, nos interpela

y reclama nuestra atención. Son ustedes víctimas de una violencia que busca la

imposición de un proyecto político y la eliminación de quienes no comparten dicho

proyecto, y queremos decirles que no podemos ni queremos afrontar el futuro sin ustedes,

que queremos reconocer su padecimiento tantas veces incomprendido y manifestar una

idea tan breve como contundente …Tengo por ello muy claro que, para que nuestro

futuro sea justo y libre, hemos de incorporar el relato de su dolor, hemos de escuchar sus

voces. (“Homenaje”)

It is important to emphasize the last words of Lertxundi: “hemos de incorporar el relato de su dolor, hemos de escuchar sus voces”. Writers, as chroniclers of their time, are members of the social collective and assume responsibility for telling the traumatic experiences of the victims of terrorism. Artistic creation becomes a restorative act and contributes to the recognition of the victims and the process of reparation and reconciliation. In his speech, Lertxundi referred to the first public rejection of the violence effected in 1980 by Basque nationalist and non-nationalist intellectuals, among them emblematic and referential figures of Basque culture such as Koldo

Mitxelena, Julio Caro Baroja and Gabriel Celaya.

Lertxundi’s speech provides a starting point to question whether the writer’s job is to denounce the violence of a specific sector of society (terrorists and their sympathizers or

64 supporters) and take a public stand against the collective problem. As it has been explained in chapter one, when I examined the origin of ETA and its historical and political context, the armed group in its initial incarnation was perceived as a palliative or at least as a means to confront the repressive apparatus of the dictatorship established by Franco. “Defenders” of the Basque language and the right of the Basque people to determine their political future, a considerable segment of

Basque society justified the terrorist attacks as the only way to destabilize the regime and reclaim what Franco regime had denied them. After the Civil War (1936-39), the use of Basque was prohibited in public spheres by means of several decrees. As Cameron Watson writes, “By a 1941 decree, the use of “dialects” (such as Catalan and Basque), “barbarisms” (foreign borrowings), and foreign languages themselves were proscribed ... Furthermore, all place and first names had to be

Castilianized in an effort to realize Franco’s one-nation vision” (171).

Indeed, the use of Euskara was prohibited in official institutions, particularly in schools where children were often punished if they defied the decree and used their Basque name, considered to be a symbol of separatism. Even before the end of the Civil War, in 1938, Francos’s cultural nationalism was being imposed. On May, 14, 1938, the Ministry of Justice signed an order prohibiting the use of “regionalized” names because they were considered to denote separatism contrary to the idea of “Patria”. Only names derived from the Catholic cult of the Virgin Mary, in line with the ideas promoting the image of what women should be under the dictatorship (pure, homely, submissive), were permitted as defined in Boletín Oficial del Estado (May 21, 1938):

Debe señalarse también como origen de anomalías registrarles la morbosa exacerbación

en algunas provincias de sentimiento regionalista, que llevo a determinados Registros

buen número de nombres, que no solamente están expresados en idioma distinto al

65 oficial castellano, sino que entrañan una significación contraria a la unidad de la

Patria.Tal ocurre en las Vascongadas con los nombres de Iñaki, Kepa, Koldobika y

otros que denuncia indiscutible significado separatista; debiendo consignarse, no

obstante, que hay nombres que sólo en vascuence o catalán o en otra lengua tienen

expresión genuina y adecuada, como Aranzazu, Iciar, Monserrat, Begoña, etc., y que

pueden y deben admitirse como nombres netamente españoles, y en nada reñidos con el

amor a la Patria única que es España. 17

Despite the prohibition or perhaps because of it, there was a certain degree of defiance by Basque people, who continued using their Basque names in the confinement of their baserri, the traditional farmhouse found in the Basque County. This defiance emerges in some works of fiction. In

Kirmen Uribe’s La hora de despertarnos juntos (2016), one of the characters, Ikerne Letamendia, refuses to answer when the school nun shouts “Visitación”. Ikerne retorts, “Me llamo Ikerne, no

Visitación. Ikerne” (13). In Bernardo Atxaga’s El hijo del acordeonista, Joseba, when asked by the new teacher, ratifies “José, pero todo el mundo me llama Joseba” (9). Thus, Basque people inhabit two distinct spaces (public and private) that will be determinant in the resistance and the sentiment of nationalism.

Numerous Basque writers have stated that the contemporary Basque novel has the ethical commitment to voice what the official history has not revealed, as is the case of the individual and collective suffering that Basque terrorism has generated for more than fifty years. Victims have

17 See Agencia Estatal Boletín Oficial de Estado., Number 577, May 21, 1938, Order on May 14.www.boe.es/datos/ pdfs/ BOE//1938/577/A07435-07436.pdf.

66 ceased to be mere statistics, and it is through fiction that they have been granted a voice. In an interview with Ana Mendoza acclaimed writer Kirmen Uribe assures: “Y estoy convencido de que lo primero es reconocer a las víctimas y denunciar cualquier vulneración de los derechos humanos, y, en segundo lugar, ir hacia un estadio de convivencia y entendimiento” (“Los escritores”). On

September 2016, Fernando Aramburu published Patria, a novel that was awarded the National

Prize for Narrative in Spanish that year. Many critics and readers have spoken enthusiastically about Patria: “la gran novela”, “la denuncia de ETA”, “la novela que se tenía que escribir” “todos debemos leerla”. Such declarations appear to suggest that Basque writers had ignored the reality of the Basque conflict, preferring not to write about it. The writer and critic Iban Zaldua insists that “Patria no marca un antes ni un después, sino un continuará” (“La literatura”).

In recent decades, whether they write and publish in Basque or in Spanish, Basque writers have confronted the social reality of the Basque Contry. In 1963 Sebastián Salaberria published

Neronek tirakok nizkin, a novel based on his experiences during the Civil War. Salaberria received the Agora award for his novel. Gabriel Aresti y Jorge Oteiza promoted political activism and a cultural movement opposed to the Francoist regime. Ramón Saizarbitoria, an acclaimed writer from San Sebastián, deals with the issue of terrorism from its historical-social complexity while denouncing Basque nationalism. Saizarbitoria wrote Ehun metro (1976) using a complex range of narrative voices, and points of views to narrate the last hundred meters that a member of ETA covers before being shot in the Plaza de la Constitución in San Sebastián. During those final hundred meters, the terrorist reminisces his childhood, the days of hiding, a past love relationship, interleaved with newspaper headlines, police interrogations and comments from the people in the street. In an interview with Aitor Guenaga, Saizarbitoria acknowledged that the nationalist legacy was a heavy burden (“Las victimas”). Moreover, he had wanted to free himself of such burden in

67 his work, redeeming what is was salvageable. Saizarbitoria wanted to disassociate literature written in Basque from Basque nationalism, since it seemed more important to him to promote the

Basque language and the construction of a Basque identity based on culture. Within the context of

Basque literature, Saizarbitoria and Atxaga are considered key figures in how they approach the issue of terrorism, as pointed out by Joseba Gabilondo. In Gabilondo’s words, “The novels of

Atxaga and Saizoarbitoria represent the first attempt to break away from this opportunism as well as the literary reluctance, prevalent in previous years, to address the issue of terrorism in its social and historical complexity. They constitute the first attempt to write historically about ETA without either endorsing or marginalizing it” (“Terrorism” 114).

Another outstanding novel, Lectura insólita de El Capital (1975), by Raúl Guerra Garrido, obtained the Nadal Prize in 1976. It is the story of a kidnapping by a far-left terrorist group, which highlights the pursuits of the kidnappers and the fears of the kidnapped, as well as the relationship of fear and submission imposed by the executioners. Guerra Garrido details in his novel the details of the extortion suffered by a Basque businessman when it comes to paying the “revolutionary tax”, and also describes the situation of many citizens living in the Basque Country who were forced to have an armed security escort because of symptomatic threats made by ETA and its supporters.

During the decade of the 1980s, the political-military branch of ETA disbanded due to internal dissidences. Dolores González Cataraín ‘Yoyes’, a prominent member of the band, left the organization in 1980 because of her opposition to the military branch of the terrorist group, and went into exile in Mexico. In 1985, she decided to embrace the Spanish 1977 Amnesty Law and returned to live in San Sebastían with her young son. On September 10, 1986, she was assassinated during a walk with her son in her hometown, Ordizia. Two years prior to ‘Yoyes’

68 assassination, on February 4, 1984, Mikel Solaun was shot in the back in Algorta while he was in a cafeteria with his wife and two daughters. Solaun had left the organization after being an active member of the band and serving time in prison. He was pardoned and returned to civilian life working in a construction company. ETA militar was not willing to allow defectors to live in peace.

Two days after the deadly attack, ETA assumed responsibility for the assassination and defiantly considered the act, “Una advertencia para todos aquellos que buscan una salida a su situación personal” (Yoldi). When the perpetrators of Solaun’s murder were apprehended, and prosecuted in court, they showed no remorse and defiantly declared that “Todo traidor en una guerra debe ser ejecutado” (Yoldi).

ETA militar intensified their violent actions with attacks that claimed the lives of 21 people and wounded many, when in June 1987 a car bomb caused a terrible explosion in the car park of

Hipercor in Barcelona. At the end of the same year, another car bomb exploded in front of the

Casa Cuartel in Zaragoza and left a balance of 11 dead and more than 30 injured. This decade marks the beginning of the dirty war of the GAL (Antiterrorist Liberation Groups). During this period, the political parties signed several accords that established the need to build a society in which terrorism would not be considered a legitimate means to achieve the political aspirations of the Basque Country. The Pact of Madrid (1987), the Pact of Ajuria Enea (1988) and the Pact of

Navarre (1988) were signed.

During this chaotic and bloody period, the world of Basque arts celebrated the international success of Bernardo Atxaga with Obabakoak (1988). The novel written in Euskara was translated into Spanish, thus becoming available outside the sphere of the Basque language. To a certain extent, in the 1980s there seemed to be an inability to face the violent reality taking place in the

Basque Country on the part of Basque writers. However, works such as Grand Place (1985), by

69 Mario Onandía and Exkixu (1988), by José Luis Álvarez Enparatza denounced Franco’s repressive regime and in the words of Mikel Ayerbe “constituyen la crónica de una generación que vive de cerca la actividad de ETA” (14).

Beginning in the 1980s, a number of organizations that demanded peace and the cessation of violence emerged. The two most important groups in the action for peace against ETA were

Gesto por la Paz and Elkarri. Gesto por la Paz of Euskal Herria was founded in 1986 with the objectives of mobilizing the Basque population to confront systemic terrorist violence, prompting society to express its rejection publicly. In addition, the organization called for silent and peaceful demonstrations to take place the day after each death caused by political violence related to the

Basque Country, both perpetrated by ETA and the GAL. Gesto opposed the dispersal of ETA inmates and in principle supported allowing them to serve their sentences closer to home. Gesto manifested itself as a collective without political ties, in favor of the current democracy and supported the Pact of Ajuria Enea, both in its speech, and in the coordination of events with the

Basque Government, when sensitive situations arose. Gesto was awarded the Prince of Asturias

Prize in 1993 and the recommendation of the Nobel Peace Prize by the Basque Parliament, among other autonomous and local institutions (Funes 35-49).

In 1992, Elkarri was founded, defining itself as a group that worked through mediation and dialogue. Elkarri was very critical of the Spanish democracy and the Statute of Basque Autonomy.

Its members’ political leanings were radical nationalist left (abertzale) and, unlike Gesto, maintained the relation between the Basque conflict and violence. For this reason, its objectives were to raise awareness among the Basque population that in the Basque Country there was a political conflict with two factions and from which a social conflict derived. In addition, Elkarri sought to facilitate dialogue without conditions. This proposed dialogue consisted of three levels:

70 in the social bases, facilitating relations between different sectors, through neighborhood associations in neighborhoods and towns; at an intermediate level, dialogue in institutions, town halls, political parties, etc.; finally, at a higher level they seek to facilitate the dialogue between

ETA and the political representatives (Funes 47-50). In 2006, Elkarri became Lokarri and the group continued to promote dialogue towards peace, in favor of the cessation of violence, as well as the legalization of the Batasuna group. After the announcement of the cessation of violence,

Lokarri ended its contiliatory effort in March 2015. In the words of its coordinatinator Paúl Ríos,

“Se ha hecho una parte importante del camino, pero aun así todos, desde instituciones, gobiernos, partidos políticos y el conjunto de la sociedad tenemos que mantener el esfuerzo para aprovechar esta oportunidad y legar una convivencia mejor a las futuras generaciones” (“Lokarri”). Indeed,

Gesto and Elkarri were forerunners of a civilian movement that arose to confront the consequences of terrorism for ordinary people. It seemed that Basque society’s support for ETA was finally waning, and the community was ready to raise their voices. This decisive moment derived from the assassination of Popular Party councilor in Ermua, Miguel Ángel Blanco on July 13, 1997, an event that shocked Basque society and would lead to what became know as “El espiritú de Ermua”, a civic movement expressing revulsion, and solidarity with all victims of terrorism. The aftermath of his killing was reviewed by the national press during the twentieth anniversary of the tragic assassination:

El hallazgo en los alrededores de Lasarte (Gipuzkoa) del cuerpo de Miguel Ángel

Blanco maniatado y con dos tiros en la cabeza cambió para siempre la lucha contra ETA.

A nivel político, pero, sobre todo, social. El silencio y miedos mayoritarios de la sociedad

vasca saltaron por los aires a esa hora. Hubo manifestaciones y gritos. Se asaltaron sedes

71 de Herri Batasuna y herriko tabernas en una espiral de ira y rabia por el crimen, un

asesinato que abrió una brecha definitiva con la banda. (Lekumberri)

The community reacted with cries to stop the violence, “Basta ya” and “¡ETA, escucha, aquí tienes mi nuca!”. In the words of Ermua’s mayor, Carlos Totorica:

En Ermua conseguimos conseguimos romper la lógica del terror. Dijimos ‘basta’ a la

presión paralizante de ETA, que consistía en asesinar a uno para asustar muchos: había

gasolina en el ambiente y estábamos hartos de tanto uso y abuso de la violencia. Fue una

absoluta tragedia, en un pueblo pequeño lo vimos como el ataque a una persona que

conocíamos ... Lo focalizamos como el secuestro y asesinato de una persona, una visión

que superaba la tradicional lógica del conflicto en el País Vasco y de la construcción

nacional, que tapaban a las personas y sus derechos por el altar de la patria. (Lekumberri)

After this catalyst event, a new sense of solidarity with victims of terrorism emerged. A collective conscience aroused and the streets witnessed numerous protests not only condemning the senseless violence, but also denouncing the endemic silence, indifference and complicity. New associations were created to preserve the memory of the victims, among them Gregorio Ordoñez, Miguel Ángel

Blanco, José Luis López de Lacalle and Fernando Buesa. During the following years, there was a proliferation of pacifist groups that upheld a distinct political leaning, condemning ETA and

Basque nationalism. These groups included, Foro de Ermua (1998), ¡Basta ya! (1999), and

Fundación para la Libertad (2002) and their main objectives were to support and protect victims of terrorism in addition to promote the recognition of those victims at an official level. Besides

72 supporting victims of terrorism, these entities advocated for an end to support negotiations with organizations like Gestoras pro Amnistia and Jarrai- Haika because of their support and justification of ETA’s activites. The gradual politicization of the victims was further intensified by the Islamist attacks in Madrid on March 11, 2004. This new attitude had repercussions in the cultural fields that produce novels, essays, documentaries and films, in which the focus of the conflict was represented from the perspective of the victims. There was an attempt to confront the reality of what was happening and Basque authors examined the daunting reality. Mikel Ayerbe observes that writers confronted “la memoria cercana y la mirada crítica a la situación socio- política” (14). Some of the most outstanding works of this period include, Etorriko haiz nirekin (1991), by Mikel Hernandez Abaitua, Agua turbia (1991), by Aingeru Epaltza, Un hombre solo (1993), by Bernardo Atxaga, Los pasos incontables (1995), by Ramon Saizarbitoria,

Kontaktua (1996), by Luitxo Fernández, El cuaderno rojo (1998) by Arantxa Urretabizkaia, and

Euri kontuak (1999), by José Luis Otamendi.

Although the focus of this investigation is Basque narrative that represents the terrorism of

ETA, it is important to mention a number of recent documentaries honoring the memory of the victims, and recognizing their forgotten voices. Film director Iñaki Arteta is one of the most committed figures. Since 2001 he has produced and directed three short films and eleven documentaries in which the testimonies of families of victims, journalists and threatened intellectuals denounced the indifference to which they were subjected by both state and autonomous governments. In addition to the interviews, shocking images of the murders were added. In his documentary, Sin libertad (2008) Arteta focused on victims who were not public figures. The thirteen selected incidents included a two-year-old boy killed by a bomb that exploded in his father's car (a civil guard), two thirteen- and nine-year-old brothers who perished in the

73 Hipercor bombing and the mayor of Etxarri-Aranaz who was killed in the presence of his children.

In the testimonies, the families stressed that at the institutional level nobody had expressed any concern for their welfare. In 2008 Arteta produced the documentary El infierno vasco, in which the focus was the exiles, citizens of the Basque Country who had been forced to move to other places in Spain due to several causes linked to terrorism or nationalism. The documentary denounced the necessity for voluntary exile because it represented an act of survival in view of the threats of groups that continued incessantly with the consent of some nationalist sectors. Journalist and founder of Foro de Ermua Fernando Savater draws attention to the anti-nationalist message and lack of social support that Arteta’s documentary emphasizes:

No es otro alegato contra ETA sino contra las actitudes sociales y políticas que han

completado la labor de segregación e intimidación comenzada por el terrorismo. Los

protagonistas que cuentan su drama en El infierno vasco lo dejan muy claro: no se

habrían ido de su tierra, de su hogar y de su trabajo si hubieran encontrado verdadero

apoyo por parte de sus conciudadanos y de las autoridades en lugar de fórmulas reticentes

de condolencia. (“Temporada”)

In the third millennium, Basque writers continued to incorporate into their works the prolonged conflict that lingered until March 16, 2010, when a French policeman was killed near

Paris and became the last victim of the armed group. During the first decades of the 21st century there are some significant works in which there is an impulse to face the reality of the suffering of victims of terrorism (direct or indirect) and the consequences of being affected by ETA’s actions.

These novels include Zorion perfektua (2002), by Anjel Lertxundi, Denboraren izerdia, by Xabier

74 Montoia (2003), Letargo, by Jokin Muñoz (2003), Las maletas imposibles, by Juanjo Olasagarre

(2004), Los peces de la amargura (2006), and Patria (2016) by Fernando Aramburu, El ángulo ciego (2008), by Luisa Etxenike, Twist by Harkaitz Cano (2011), Martutene, by Saizarbitoria

(2012), and Mejor la ausencia (2017), by Edurne Portela. To a certain extent, it may be argued that in this new period fiction elicits the questioning of lethargy. This lethargy is what the writer and scholar Edurne Portela describes as “Despertar del letargo”. Portela argues that many writers have begun to write about the Basque conflict, and their fiction finally confronts issues of silence and “letargo”. Their fiction, in Portela’s words, “explora el silencio en torno a la violencia, la normalización de ésta en la vida cotidiana y la indiferencia como modo de estar en el mundo”

(417). That is to say, the writer subverts the discourse and forces society to confront the “other”, the neglected victim. Moreover, fiction questions the spiral of silence that contributes to the normalization of violence. As it was indicated in the first chapter of this work, I argue that the writers being examined here have directed their frustration at the reality of violence in the Basque

Country. By means of the fictional words created in their novels, they continue the tradition of the so-called social novel, forming an alliance between ethics and literature.

2.2. El ángulo ciego by Luisa Etxenike

Luisa Etxenike was born in San Sebastián, Guipúzcoa. Etxenike has published a number of novels including, La entrevista (2016), El detective de sonidos (2011), El ángulo ciego (Euskadi

Literary Award, 2009), Los peces negros (2005), Vino (2000), El mal más grave (1997) and

Efectos secundarios (1996). In addition, she has written a collection of short stories, Ejercicios de duelo (2001), and La historia de amor de Margarita Maura (1990) as well as a book of poetry, El arte de la pesca (2015). In her latest novel Absoluta presencia (2018) Etxenike addresses the

75 history of a victim of the band ETA, continuing her denouncement of terrorism. During her presentation of the novel in the city of Malaga, Etxenike reiterates, “En España hemos vivido cinco décadas de esta lacra del terrorismo y me parece importante que el arte indague en esa memoria”

(Griñan). Etxenike has explored all genres, having recently published a collection of letters,

Correspondencia in collaboration with Mircea Cartarescu (2016), as part of the project Chejov vs

Shakespeare, inspired by Donostia/San Sebastián- European Capital of Culture 2016. One of her latest works, is the stage play, La herencia (Buero Vallejo Prize 2016). Her last novel Absoluta presencia (2018), continues exploring the consequences of terrorism in the lives of three protagonists. The writer also organizes writing workshops, teaches courses on gender studies and narrative theory, and has been a visiting scholar at several US universities (Columbia University of Wisconsin in Green Bay). In addition, she collaborates with the press and writes for the newspaper El País.

Etxenike’s work has attracted attention in literary circles of the Basque Country. In addition, a number of reviews and articles have been published in the cultural section of El País and El Diario Vasco, among them those written by Enrique Mingo, Pablo Mueller, Javier Celaya, and Guillermo Garcia. In the academic world, there is significant interest in examining the work of the Basque writer, in particular how she portrays the victims of gender violence and terrorism.

María-Dolores Alonso-Rey focuses her analysis on the ethic and aesthetic character of the novel, affirming that “Etxenike presenta una visión de la víctima que coincide con la de quienes hacen del irenismo de las víctimas su esencia” (1). Alonso-Rey argues that Etxenike uses post-modern metafiction and aesthetics to highlight a message that demands the maximum dignity of the non- vindictive victim and the ethical imperative of opposing terrorism. It proposes a poetics in which aesthetics and ethics go hand in hand (1). In this respect, I coincide with Alonso-Rey’s assertion

76 as I propose to discuss the figure of Miren, who is mother and widow, and at the same time who refuses to give up her dignity and encourages her son, Martín, to complete his novel so that there is testimony of his father assassination. Alonso-Rey argues that the meeting between adult Martín and his mother can be interpreted as a confession. In this meeting, both characters relinquish their secrets and verbalize their inner fears but also their hopes:

El encuentro entre madre e hijo de version original presenta la estructura de una

confesión o confesión de confesiones: la madre confía su secreto y el de su marido a su

hijo, éste confía el suyo a la madre y proyecta confiarlo también a su compañera. Esta

conversación y la consiguiente escritura de la ficción están en la línea de terapias e las

que la verbalización es el instrumento liberador del sujeto. (6)

Indeed, Martín and Miren need someone to read their story, so that they may find release from their grief and frustrations with a society that neglets to acknowledge what has been inflicted upon them. Alonso-Rey compares Martín to Miguel Tomás y Valiente, who wrote the novel El hijo ausente (2008) after his father Francisco Tomás y Valiente was killed by ETA in 1990 (5).

Roland Vazquez, explores the portrayals of the victims of ETA’s violence in contemporary

Basque narrative. He argues that “One trend is the movement away from ‘terrorist’ and toward

‘victim’ as the narrative focus” (1). He pays attention to what he calls “The Post-Terrorism Literary

Movement”. Vazquez claims that novels like El ángulo ciego are examples of fiction where the figure of the antagonists and their voices are excluded from the literary work (6). The only voices the reader hears and experiences are the ones of the victims. The revolutionary and nationalist discourse remains absent, voiceless. Vazquez notes that when Martín briefly interacts to confront

77 “the other”, the sympathizers who rejoice senseless violence, “they appear as unnamed, hostile individuals without life trajectories who utter single sentence, aggressive comments where the possible escalation of violence is ever present” (4). By virtue of omission, the terrorists’ message is shattered, thus the author makes an appeal on behalf of the victims.

In her MA thesis, “La violencia terrorista de ETA en la narrative del siglo XXI” (2016),

Montserrat Fuente-Camacho examines three narrative works: Letargo, by Jokin Muñoz, He visto ballenas, by Javier de Isusi, and El ángulo ciego, by Etxenike. Fuente-Camacho studies the role of the victims and their perspective in the face of terrorism in El ángulo ciego. She argues that

Martín and his mother Miren suffered a traumatic experience and their reactions to the trauma subvert the traditional gender roles when facing pain (67). Miren, though affected by the loss of her husband, remains strong and in charge of the household. Martín, on the other hand, seems to be drifting aimlessly. Fuente-Camacho considers Miren, an independent and strong femenine character who does not want her son to feel guilty or to resort to violence to avenge his father.

Instead, in the words of the narrator “quiere que su hijo no deje que los asesinos de su padre ganen arrabatandole su felicidad” (90). For this reason, Miren finally confides in her son and explains what “el ángulo ciego” meant to her and her husband - a safe space to inhabit and survive the threat of terrorism.

In her analysis of Martín, Fuente-Camacho refers to the concept of hegemonic masculinity and power as proposed by Australian sociologist Raweyn Connell in a report from a field study of social inequality in Australian high schools (Kessler et al. 1982). Hegemonic masculinity is defined as a practice that legitimizes men’s dominant position in society and justifies the subordination of women, and other marginalized ways of being a man. The concept of hegemonic masculinity is based on practice that permits men’s collective dominance over women to continue

78 (Connell and Messerschmidt, 841). Men internalize their emotions and suppress them because they are inconsistent with masculine power. However, such emotions do not dissappear, they are held back. Fuente-Camacho states, “Esto puede convertirse en fuente de dolor porque ningún hombre es capaz de dejar de sentir, y fuente de temor por miedo y vergüenza a ser descubierto”

(91). Martín does not wish to deviate from society’s expections, and struggles to maintain a bravado façade consistent with the dominant masculinity. The internalization of his pain provokes anguish because acknowledging the problem would mean the collapse of the basic elements of masculinity. In the words of Fuente-Camacho “Este temor tiene que ser reprimido” (91).

Annabel Martín identifies El ángulo ciego as, “una de las primeras novelas escritas en

Euskadi en pensar la violencia de ETA como un ‘contagio’ que afecta a los familiares de las víctimas del terrorismo y que contamina por extensión a toda la sociedad vasca” (“El viaje” 61).

Images of an ailing, diseased and tainted society governed by fear are often alluded to in Etxenike’s work. In the novel, Martín and his girlfriend Ane talk abour fear. While Martín discusses what he had done earlier in his parents’ bedroom, Ane begins to reflect on the fear and oppression permeating their lives. She admits her apprehension, and describes that she feels “Como en una habitación de miedo, ahí estamos encerrados todos nosotros, todo el tiempo. Y da igual cómo lo vive cada uno, da igual cuánto miedo tiened cada uno de nosotros, o que haya gente que no lo sienta, da igual, porque ese aire aire atemorizado lo respiramos todos, es el único aire que hay en este país para respirar” (49). As Martín continues to explain what he felt when he was with his mother, Ane continues her discourse on fear and metaphorical disease, “Aire envenenado. Y nos dejan respirarlo quienes podrían poner remedio a tantas cosas y no lo hacen ... dejan que se nos llenen los pulmones con esa polución ... Cancer de miedo par nuestros pulmones” (50). Ane exposes the nature of the disease, indifference and complicity by those you could do something

79 about it. Victims are not only those who are kidnapped, or assassinated. There are indirect victims, family members, friends and aquaintances whose suffering is not limited to the loss of love ones, just like Martín, Miren and Ane. The aftermath of their loss will affect their lives forever.

El ángulo ciego (2008) received the Euskadi Prize for Literature in Spanish in 2009, awarded by the Department of Culture of the Basque Government. El ángulo ciego originates from a violent event and narrates two stories, two version of the incidents. The theme of the novel develops the aftermath that occurred after the burial of a bodyguard, fatal victim of an attack by

ETA, and that is remembered and narrated by his son Martín. In El ángulo ciego there are four characters that appear in the two versions of the story: the murdered Martín Dorronsorro, father, who is an escort killed by ETA when he was protecting a Basque socialist politician; Martín, his son, who is the voice that narrates the “original version”; Miren, Martín’s mother appears in both versions of the story; Anne, Martín’s French girlfriend in the “original version”, who in the novel written by Martín is Ane, lives in San Sebastián, and is his high school friend.

Etxenike structures the novel in two parts: in the first (“the novel”), the narrator tells us the experience of the protagonist, Martín about to turn eighteen, after the murder of his father. In the second one (“original version”), an adult Martín recounts the reality of the events that took place after the death of his father. By structuring the work in two parts, Etxenike makes the proposition that potentially there are always two versions of history. The author chooses to tell a fragmented story and challenges the reader to reconsider the historical versions of the victims. When approaching the point of view of the victims of ETA, she reflects and denounces the consequences of irrational violence. Etxenike constructs the voice of Martín a sober type that avoids hyperbole and rhetorical excess. Instead, Etxenike gives more importance to the trauma experienced by

Martín and Miren. During an interview with University of Deusto professor Pilar Rodríguez,

80 Etxenike explained that when she was outlining the novel, she chose a condensed discourse and disregarded unnecessary language with the objective to represent the suffering of the victims in a simple manner rather than focusing on creating a more colorful and aesthetic language. Etxenike considered this particular aesthetic approach more suitable to appeal to the reader and to reflect on the real consequences of terrorism, not only the acts but the aftermath.

Martín struggles with the finality of his father’s death, unable to articulate his grief. The young man thinks it is ironic that his father, who maintained a healthy lifestyle and was in the prime of his life, had ceased to exist. The assassination violates Martín’s expectations. The terrorists deprived him of a future shared with his father, his hero. Martín informs Ane what his father was like:

Era joven. Nadie en mi colegio tenia unos padres tan jóvenes como los mío; como si

fueran mis hermanos mayores ... El mío se cuidaba. Pero eso ya te lo he dicho. Se había

montado un mini gimnasio en casa. “Un txoko gimnasio”, decía él. Y todo el día

comiendo fruta y bebiendo té. Para que luego vengan esos cabrones y te peguen dos tiros.

Era muy joven. Nadie en mi colegio tenía unos padres tan jóvenes. Pero eso ya te

lo he dicho. (16)

Martín in the novel is overwhelmed by his pain. He feels fear, anger and imagines threats everywhere. It is as if his father’s assassins were watching him wherever he goes. When he walks along the streets of San Sebastián with Ane, he feels vulnerable, remains alert and scrutinizes his surroundings. In the words of the narrator, “Mirando a un lado y a otro lado de la calle, con el cuello estirado y los ojos muy abiertos, como un pájaro pequeño de los que sólo miran para

81 defenderse” (20). He observes Ane walking down the hill, her back, unprotected, vulnerable and

Martín “no puede quitarse de la cabeza que ya no podrá ver a nadie de espaldas sin pensar ‘blanco’,

‘diana’, ‘objetivo’. Esos cabrones les llaman objetivos” (20). In order to explain what Martín feels, it will be useful to refer to the term Panopticon, as developed by Jeremy Bentham and analyzed by French philosopher Michel Foucault, in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975).

Panopticon is the building with a tower in the center from where each prisoner is under constant surveillance by the prison guards. Prisoners can see the tower, but they never know where they are being watched. Foucault uses the concept as a metaphor for the power of modern discipline and argues that “The Panopticon creates a consciousness of permanent visibility as a form of power, where no bars, chains, and heavy locks are necessary for domination any more” (228). When discussing El ángulo ciego, I do not refer to a physical building, but rather to the term itself as a metaphor of control used by the terrorists and their supporters, monitoring relentlessly and menacing over the symbolic “other”, whether it is a bodyguard like Martín’s father, or a politician affiliated to a non-nationalist party.

When one occupies the urban and public space, it is almost impossible to voice free speech, but rather it is necessary to endure the tyranny of terror in order not to arouse suspicion.

Individuals relinquish their freedoms to survive the mob. Martín, in the novel, despite the suspicion that he is being watched, confronts the supporters of ETA because he is dismayed by the community acquiescence of senseless violence. Martín is ready to take action and resolutely informs Ane of his resolve, “No quiero quedarme con los brazos cruzados” (59). He walks towards the “Parte vieja de la ciudad”, and after stopping at a souvenir shop to buy postcards and then a hardware store to buy adhesive to stick them, Martín enters a tavern where ETA’s supporters sozialize among themselves. The narrator describes a typical Herriko Taberna:

Varias banderas del País Vasco, ikurriñas de distintos tamaños, repartidas por todo el

bar. Una grande de tela sobre una de las paredes; varias más pequeñas de distintos

materiales … Dos rectángulos de tela blanca, colgados de la pared. Ambos representan

el mapa silueteado en negro de Euskal Herria, y un lema en letras del mismo color. En

uno el mensaje dice: “Presoak Euskal Herrira”; en el otro: “Presoak etxera orein”.

Pegatinas también por todo el bar, con la indicación Amnistia o Independentzia o

Autodeterminación. (33)

The tavern is a contentious space where the differences between “them” and “us” is fully apparent in all semiotic signs: Basque flags, slogans, pamphlets, and photos of imprisoned terrorists. On the counter of the tavern Martín places the postcards bought in the souvernir shop that feature the most emblematic places of the city, “Ni la Concha, ni los jardines de Alberdi Eder, ni las olas saltando en el paseo Nuevo” (35). Places his father will never be able to see again. Martín defiantly utters,

“Cierras los ojos y no ves los paisajes. Estás muerto y no puedes verlos” (35). He continues challenging ETA’s sympathizers and denounces their complicity, “Esta plastilina pega perfecto.

Como un paquete de explosivo en los bajos de un coche … El coche arranca, empieza a andar y la bomba no se cae. Pega perfecto” (35). After two bartenders physically threaten him, “Lárgate.

¿Quieres que te saque a hostias?” (35), Martín leaves the bar, but not without capturing one final look at the place. He observes, and inspects some of the objects and symbols that represent the hostility between two imagined identities. This space belongs to “them”, those who would have celebrated the murder of this father. Martín reflects, “Este es el bar de ellos, los que no lamentan la muerte de mi padre, todo lo contrario, los que se alegran de que le hayan asesinado. Seguro que

83 han brindado aquí mismo, frente esa barra, en estas mesas. Celebrando aquí mismo el asesinato por lo menos del escolta, por lo menos ha caído uno de los dos. Seguro que han brindado” (36).

Martín mentions the importance of the traditional family home, symbol of Basque culture and how the terrorists have appropriated the symbol “casa/nación”, “Presoak etxera…y ¿a qué casa? ¿a qué casa? Porque lo que para ellos es casa, este país. Euskadi, ya no es casa para mí. La casa es un lugar donde la gente no tiene miedo” (36). Martín’s anger grows when he considers that for the terrorists, “Euskadi es un paisaje abierto, ancho, completo, un casa de par en par” (37).

That is to say, that terrorists move freely, they do not hide, they haunt and threaten their victims.

Whereas, his father was always alert, aware of danger everywhere, almost a prisoner with nowhere to hide. Martín laments:

A nosotros nos quedan las esquinas, las migajas, los huecos, los nichos del espacio.

¿Qué casa? ¿Casa de quién? Casas-refugio para nosotros. Casas de socorro. Casas

cerradas, tapiadas, blindadas. Casas con consignas para entrar y salir. Mi padre miraba

cada día los bajos de su coche. Nunca nos llevaba en el coche por si acaso. Nunca nos

llevaba. Nunca venía. No podíamos abrir el buzón ni atender el timbre … ¿Qué clase

de casa era mi casa? (37)

Martín feels nauseus thinking that the terrorists have appropriated not only Euskal Herria as a territory, but also the language he uses has been usurped and exploited to pursue a delusional fantasy. He grieves, “Presoak etxera. Escrito en esta lengua que también es mía; y no quiero quererla. No puedo quererla, porque no quiero parecerme a ellos en nada ... Anudado el euskera en mi garganta” (37). Moreover, Martín in his observations realizes that his appearance is almost

84 identical to those who occupy the Herriko Taberna. While in the tavern he observes the surroundings, and recognizes himself in the boy at the bar as he wears “Una camiseta y una cazadora como tantas, como las de cualquier chaval. Podría llevarlas este que acaba de ponerle la caña” (34).

On his way home, the image of the “other” is reflected upon himself, “Nada por fuera le distingue de los chicos del bar. Pero él no se parece en nada, no quiere parecerse” (39). Martín makes a decision. He does not wish to be associated with any of those individuals. He decides to transform himself into his dead father and goes to a traditional barber where he is given a style like his father’s. When he returns home, he dresses up with his father’s clothes, looks at the mirror and sees his dead father in him. Martín in the novel feels dead while alive, “Se coloca delante del espejo donde puede verse de cuerpo entero. Cuerpo presente” (40). He begins to behave like his father, and stealthily surveys the sorroundings, “Mira hacia los lados, mira por los rincones de la habitación, debajo de la cama, detrás de la cortinas como hacen los escoltas” (40).

Etxenike offers us different perspectives through different narrative voices, especially in the painful situations of the story. In the case of El ángulo ciego these voices give rise to two versions of the same story narrated in first and third person by Martín in the novel, and Martín the writer-victim respectively. This is significant at the ethical and ideological level, because it implies that there is no single worldview, and it compels readers to reconsider their own convictions.

Etxenike’s novel fosters a narrative of ethics - a personal moral reflection on the world and in particular about terrorism by means of elements characteristic of literary narrative. As noted earlier, the narrative of ethics is a mixed discourse constituted by ethics and narrative. It is understood here that ethics is a type of discourse that reflects theoretically upon the preference of certain moral values and actions. Narrative of ethics is the code of a moral reflection on the

85 element’s characteristic of narrative. This code allows the writer to reflect upon moral questions related to terrorism. In the following pages, the narrative of ethics of El ángulo ciego will be identified.

In Narrative Ethics (1997), Zachary Newton formulates his theory of a narrative of ethics.

To begin, he admits that the relationship between both discourses, ethics and narrative, may be understood in two meanings, “on the one hand, as attributing to narrative discourse some kind of ethical status, and on the other, as referring to the way ethical discourse often depends on narrative structures” (8). Based on this mutual relationship, the first meaning is the one I am interested in for the purpose of this investigation. Newton starts by making reference to Genette’s triadic model:

1) the story, or signified content, 2) the narrative, the signifier or narrative text, and 3) narrating, the narrative act. He then privileges narrating, “since I believe that this act initiates responsibilities alongside forms, it receives far greater attention here than Genette or other narratologists have allowed” (9). To frame his focus, Newton describes the traditional perspective that literary criticism has adopted when relating ethics and narrative. Newton argues that “One speaks of ethics as a “defining property of the novel” in terms of “authorial responsibility” or of literary characters’

“moral imagination”, or of the “exemplariness” of themes and topic; narrative form functions as a vehicle form substantive ethical content” (9).

This perspective, in Newton’s opinion, is limited to connecting form and content (9).

However, Newton’s perspective derives from Emmanuel Levinas’ ethics based on the responsibility we acquire with the “other”. That is to say, a problem of intersubjectivity and encounter that prose fiction reflects perfectly. Newton states that “Narrative situations create an immediacy and force, framing relations of provocation, call, and response that bind narrator and listener, author and character, or reader and text ... In this sense, prose fiction translates the

86 interactive problematic of ethics into literary forms. Stories, like persons, originate alogically”

(13). According to this perspective, the connection between ethics and narrative is one of a pragmatic nature, one more interactive than legislative (13). Therefore, it makes sense that Newton focuses his attention on the initial state of the narrative process, the act or narrating, because it is in this element where phenomena of encounter and intersubjectivity are reproduced. Based on this approach, Newton formulates his own triad18, an expansion of the first stage of Genette’s narrative.

The elements in this triad are: “1) a narrational ethics (in this case, signifying the exigent conditions and consequences of the narrative at itself); 2) a representational ethics (the costs incurred in fictionalizing oneself of others by exchanging “person” for “character”), and 3) a hermeneutic ethics (the ethico-critical accountability), which acts of reading hold their readers to” (18).

For Newton, prose fiction bonds with ethics in virtue of its capacity to reproduce phenomena of encounter and intersubjectivity, based on Levina’s intersective philosophy. The narrative act is the one that best reflects this model because it is a form of encounter and communication with the “other”.

In this dissertation, I study El ángulo ciego in light of narrative ethics. This dissertation foster the idea that El ángulo ciego exhibits narrative ethics, understood as a hybrid discourse by which it reflects on moral questions by means of literary devices. Nevertheless, this capacity, that

Newton reserves for the narrative act, needs to be extended to other narrative discourse elements.

Indeed, narration is essential, because it generates the story, but the hybrid discourse does not end there. On the contrary, it reflects on moral questions by means of elements such as the sequence

18 There are some studies that deal with the relationshio between ethics and literature where this approach is used. See Wayne Booth, “Who is responsible in Ethical Criticism?”, and Daniel Jeringan, Literature and Ethics.Questions of Responsibility in Literary Studies.

87 of events, space, characters, and the story itself. In El ángulo ciego, Etxenike uses this discourse to elucidate her particular narrative ethics, namely, her stance on the moral question of terrorism and violence. Newton states on the history on novel as genre, “Ethics loosely informed the novel’s early development as a discourse both accessory ... and internal ... to narrative texts” (9). That is to say, there is a type of novel in which ethical discourse is an additional element of the content.

On the one hand, this type of novel is suitable to find enduring moral values. On the other, there is a moral system opposing violence and terrorism for which expression the writer has created what may be considered a timeless plot.

In El ángulo ciego, this narrative ethics is developed in the elements of the narrative discourse. The origin of this process is Martín in his role of narrator, and responsible of the story and the form. He directs his narration to his mother, his young self, his dead father and those who killed him. Martín will establish with them relationships of intersubjectiviy and encounter as described by Newton. Secondly, the novel’s moral reflections are exposed by questioning the loss of moral referents, and the search for redemption by means of events, space and the characters.

Finally, the novel uses the narrative ethics in the story because it dissociates two visions of the world - Martín’s vision in the “novel” and his mother vision in both the “novel” and the “original version”, whose interrelationship produces a thesis: the supremacy of the moral values of the victims upon the ideals of the terrorists. This thesis constitutes, precisely, the narrative ethics of

Luisa Etxenike, her position upon the issue of terrorism.

The fundamental importance of the narration for the relationship between narrative and ethics has already been outlined by Newton. As noted earlier, the story emerges from this act. The narrator of the “original version”, Martín, addresses his words to his mother, Miren, and to himself.

He reflects upon what he has done and should have done while “conversing” with to his dead

88 father, and with to those who support terrorism. All these instances thus become narratees.

Between Martín and each narratee a relationship is established, one that reproduces the types of encounters designated by Newton. In the encounters between one and the other there is, therefore, an ethical relationship in the Levinasian sense, by virtue of which it is possible to speak of the triad that Newton posits: narrational ethics, representational ethics and hermeneutic ethics. I will now detail these three aspects.

The first category, narrational ethics, consists of “the dialogic system of exchanges at work among tellers, listeners, and witnesses, and the intersubjective responsibilities and claims which follows from the act of storytelling” (18). Martín incurs a responsibility for the very act of telling his mother about the life of fear he endured as a teenager living among other young people who had fallen prey of the terrorist rhetoric. Martín and Miren commit themselves to a resolution of the secrets each of them has kept for years. Miren presides as a listener and shares with Martín, if only occasionally, the responsibility of the narrative, when she relates how she and her late husband had created their own universe (el ángulo ciego) to find a refuge away from intimidation and fears. Another aspect of Miren’s role is how she continually insists on rejecting the Old

Testament “an eye for an eye” justice, and encourages Martín to finish his novel so that their stories, the stories of the victims of terrorism are not forgotten. Miren insists, “Pues lo tienes que hacer. Escribir un libro para que todo el mundo sepa lo que ha pasado ... Está bien que escribas sobre el asesinato de tu padre. Esa es tu manera de ser valiente” (176).

It has been indicated before that, when Martín was a teenager he lacked the courage to take action. Rather that confronting the conflict, he left the Basque Country to study in Paris, away from the political trouble. In the “original version” Etxenike presents the process of writing the true story of Martín. In this version, Martín did not stay in his homeland, the country the terrorists

89 had appropriated. He was scared and aware of the threat his family had to endure because of his father’s line of work. Martín, resenting his father, invented a lie and chose a self-imposed exile because he was terrified, even though at the time he never verbalized the internal turmoil he was undergoing. Martín, like his mother, had a long-kept secret. When the assassination takes place, he is forced to confront his past. Martín returns home dragged with remorse because he must reconcile the fact he had already, at least symbolically, killed his father when he denied him and informed Anne that his parents had died in an accident. He needs to confess and finally divulges his secret to his mother:

No me fui de casa por mis peleas con el aita, ni porque la escuela de Paris fuera la mejor;

me fui por miedo. Porque me aterrorizaba la posibilidad de que me mataran a mí también

por ser su hijo. De que me mataran por equivocación o venganza. De aquel día que

descubrí el miedo no tuve más que miedo. Y rabia por ser un cobarde … Una excusa

decente, y escapar. (155)

Martín feels remorseful because he recalls how “aquel día descubrí que podía pensar contra mi padre, que podía ponerme del lado de los que le no iban a defenderle” (161). This statement highlights the generational conflict of Basque terrorism. Many young Basques thought their parents and the PNV (Basque Nationalist Party) were too passive and had abandoned the nationalist cause. Fernando Reinares discusses hundreds of interviews he conducted among ETA’s militants and sympathizers, many of whom joined the band as an act of rebellion and defiance.

Interviewee 10 confesses that “Yo pensaba que habia que hacer algo más, ¿no?... Yo veía que, por lo menos por parte del PNV, por parte de EGI, no hacían absolutamente nada ... Y en cambio, los

90 otros por lo menos eran dinámicos, ¿no? Entonces era más atractivo para un joven el meterme en algo dinámico” (34).

Martín’s rejection of terrorism motivates him to flee but his exodus becomes a heavy burden to carry. He admits, “Siento una culpa en mí ... Pero siento una forma de culpa en mí, una cobardía en mí como una culpa” (161). Martín, the writer states, “Necesito que la novela mienta para sostenerme en pie yo también; necesito que ese chico haga lo que yo no hice” (177- 178). It is an attempt to redeem himself. He wants Martín to stay, not to escape. Martín wishes to grant the fictional Martín with a voice. When Martín narrates what happened the day he decided he could no longer stay in his town, Miren begins to tell her own story about what it was like to live in fear.

There is no conversation between them, but rather two stories that converge and complement each other:

Martín: Ellos venían de frente y yo lo hice. Después me he dedicado a tapar esa

cobardía y esa vergüenza con un mundo de ocultaciones y mentiras.

Miren: No es mía la culpa de tener que alegrarme viendo que haces tu vida lejos de este

país. Alegrándome de tenerte lejos de mí, te protejo; fíjate hasta que extremos nos ha

llevado el terrorismo. Mi sufrimiento por tu ausencia te protege.

Martín: Una montaña de silencio y de falsedades. Eso he sido. Me parece que en todos

estos años no me he dedicado a otra cosa.

Miren: La culpa no es nuestra. La culpa es de los asesinos y de sus cómplices y de los

que les protegen de una manera u otra; los que pudiendo poner a los terroristas en su

sitio, dejar bien claro, con todas las letras, que son unos asesinos, unos infames,

91 pudiendo ponerles en su sitio, no lo hacen, y dejan que se instale la confusión, la

ambigüedad. (158)

These two voices completement each other and complete the story. On the one hand, Martín explains the reasons behind his departure. On the other, Miren reflects on her son’s absence and silence and also on society’s failure to deal with the issue of terrorism in an ethical manner.

Etxenike uses semantic fields that denote emotional states (cobardía, vergüenza, culpa, sufrimiento) to echo the plight of the victims of terrorism.

The second category, representational ethics, represents for Newton the, “momentous distance that lies between person and character, or character and caricature, the gain, losses, and risks taken up when selves represent or are represented by others” (18). Martín, the father, tragically killed by the terrorists, does not appear in the novel. Nevertheless, his presence is felt throughout the novel as Miren recalls their life together. Similarly, Martín often converses with his father’s “spirit”. Both assume the responsibility of saving the distance between the father and the image they offer of him. The two of them propose different versions of Martín, father, with which they commit themselves without being sanctioned by any omniscient narrator. By virtue of the interrelation of the two, and above all of Miren’s version, the meaning of the novel emerges.

The third category, hermeneutic ethics, concerns the level of interpretation and criticism:

“textual interpretation consists of both private responsibilities incurred in each singular act of reading and public responsibilities that follow from discussing and teaching works of fiction” (19).

This category includes the readings that the novel may provoke, and even more if the work enters the cultural debate on terrorist violence.

92 The events in El ángulo ciego contain, in themselves, important ethical repercussions, because they involve values such as good, evil, peace, justice, loyalty, respect, etc. But, beyond the absolute terms, the sequence in which they occur works as an ethical message. Nina

Rosenstand, notes that “stories are not just slices of life, but also moral arguments, with premises and conclusions, trying to persuade us to look at things in a different way” (157). Thus, if stories constitute moral arguments, this quality depends, among other aspects, on the sequence of events that form them. That is to say, the order of the events functions as a premise that leads to a moral conclusion and in this order, it is crucial the relationship cause-effect. In El ángulo ciego, there are two different outcomes, the one offered by Martín in the “novel”, and the unfulfilled one in the

“original version”. There are two different premises that will generate far reaching moral conclusions.

It will be useful to summarize the novel again. Martín is a teenager who has just attended his father burial. His father was an escort of a local politician who died in a terrorist attack. Martín is enraged and protests that no one does anything about the systemic violence. It seems that nobody really cares about the victims. He decides to go the gathering place of ETA’s supporters, the

Herriko Taberna, where he confronts them while showing a series of postcards of the places his father will never see again. Later, Martín decides to “kidnap” one of the young men he saw in the bar and treats him in the same way terrorists treat their victims. He pretends to have a weapon and threatens the “elegido”, telling him that he knows where he and his family live and will be watching them. Martín wants to inspire the same fear and uncertainty he and his mother have been suffering for years. In the “novel” Martín is determined and courageous. The readers soon realize that in the second part or “original version”, Martín confesses that he was scared and could not remain in

93 the Basque Country living with his parents. He writes the novel because he wants to express what he and Basque society should have done. That is why he writes, to atone and appease his demons.

In this succession of events, it is important to consider the story as a return. This is a journey with a tragic return because the return originates with the assassination of Martín’s father. It may be noted that Etxenike’s novel has similarities with the novels of education or Bildungsroman, since all of them include the return of someone who has experienced a transformation. Martín, in fact, comes back with a purpose, which has morphed into a new mission. He reveals his intent:

Me he puesto a escribir en el tren, como un loco, para intentar algo de verdad, un granito

de arena de verdad en la playa inmensamente falsa. Las primeras páginas, como un loco,

de una novela hecha de pequeños capítulos, secuencias. Una video- novela la he llamado,

se lo dicho a Anne, la textura de un guión, pero desde una perspectiva que lo ensancha,

que fuerza sus límites. (122).

Martín’s mission is not limited to a simple physical return, but rather to seek reconciliation with himself, with his mother and also to metaphorically confront his father’s killers with his testimony.

He seeks reconciliation and informs his mother that “Necesito que ese chico haga lo que yo no hice” (178). The certainty that the answer is not exactly founded on the events, but rather on its continuity, it is also upheld by the character of Miren, who longs to reveal to her son the secret she has concealed for years. Miren repeats “Pero a ti te lo tengo que contar... Pero a ti te lo voy a contar” (183). Not only the events are important, but also the relationships that linked them, and in particular, the reasons and the causes. It is essential to know the cause of the return, because it is equivalent to knowing the cause of the tragedy. Indeed, the return to San Sebastián has moral

94 relevance because Martín will try to attain redemption in his confession with his mother, that is, he will attempt to reach the end of a journey that began when he left his life and family behind and sought refuge in an imaginary world.

Nina Rosenstand notes that stories are “moral arguments, with premises and conclusions, trying to persuade us to look at things in a different way. They can be good, and they can be fallacious – and sometimes they’re flat out bad ... But even so, most stories whether they are novels, short stories, plays or films, have a moral message” (157). El ángulo ciego proposes two outcomes.

The novel written by the adult Martín describes a young fictional Martín, who refuses to remain silent or to hide. He is also incensed with anger at everyone, including his mother and even his dead father. Martín becomes violent and pushes his mother away when she refuses to open a wardrobe with her husband’s clothes and personal items. Martín is frantic and “Revuelve como un loco en el interior y va sacando y tirando al suelo lo que encuentra. Pero solo era ropa blanca” (77).

The second version “the original” reveals that Martín is returning home from Paris after learning that his father has been killed. On the train, he decides to write the novel that readers have just read. It may be argued that Martín is an unreliable narrator as he writes a novel that “lies” in order for him not to lose his dignity.

Unlike the character that Martín has created in his novel, he fled to Paris after disowning his father twice. First, because he was ashamed of what his father represented and the danger his job had caused the entire family. While he writes, Martín ponders, “La comprensión de que eres un cobarde. Porque no es miedo por mi padre lo que siento sino miedo por mí. Miedo a morir yo también o en su lugar” (136). Secondly, because, once he settled down in Paris, Martín symbolically killed his parents when he informed his girlfriend Anne that they had perished in a car accident. He recalls why he lied, “le dije nada más de conocerla, para tapar la vergüenza de la

95 cobardía, para ensayar, para intentar el inhumano esfuerzo de convertir ese guión falso en una versión verdadera de mí mismo” (138). Even before his father’s assassination, Martín was an orphan - defeated, alienated, unable to confront his past decisions. However, in the process of writing and appropriating the story and the narrative, Martín at last may return home to complete his journey and reconcile with his mother and more importantly with himself, his fears, and his failings as a dutiful son.

What becomes apparent is that doing what is morally right entails numerous trials and tribulations. Martín fled because of his fears, because he was traumatized by the violence and the silence society was inflicting on the victims. In order to recover from his trauma, he needed to deal with it. Judith Herman has identified three necessary stages for victims to complete their recovery:

“establishing safety, reconstructing the trauma story, and restoring the connection between survivors and their community” (3). Martín fled to Paris to establish safety. His novel is an attempt to reconstruct the trauma - the events of his childhood and the death of his father, intensified by the continued reference to the time of the assassination. Martín repeats “eran las quince horas, cuarenta y tres minutos y unos cuantos segundos” (15). With his return the journey is almost complete as he is now travelling towards his ancestral space. Mieke Bal describes these spaces as those where, “the character returns home and their journey home it is expected to result in a change, liberation, introspection, wisdom or knowledge” (137). Martín, the orphan, revisits and verbalizes his traumatic and shameful childhood memories in two different ways. First, he speaks with his mother in the “original version”, which he narrates in first person. Then, by means of writing a fictional account of the events, narrated by him in third person. Words adquiere a cathartic dimension and serve as an agent of survival. Enrique Echeburúa considers that traumatized victims may regain control their lives by reintegrating their experiences in written stories (174). If Martín

96 stumbles throughout his journey, Miren does not. She remains stoic and resolute not to allow darkness to inhabit the space she and her husband invented.

To conclude this section, I wish to refer to the epigraph that introduces the novel, “Y luz no usada”, from “Oda a Salinas” by Fray Luis de León. The “unused light” of the poet may be compared with the blind angle, intimate, imaginary and symbolic space constructed by Martín’s parents, where they reside defending their dreams and hopes despite the terrorists’ threats and their sympathizers’ harassment and complicity. It is their decision to resist the persecution by creating spaces with “light” within the collective blindness. That is why Miren smiles. Her smile is a sign of defiance that sets the tone of the “versión original”. Martín’s description of his mother and her demeanor after the funeral, portrays a person with moral strength, and integrity who will not surrender her dignity even in the face of death:

La sonrisa y la dignidad tan a menudo juntas, sosteniéndose … Mi madre sonríe …

Pero esa sonrisa que podría significar que mi madre está exhausta, derrumbada, significa

todo lo contrario. Lo sé. Significa que ella está entera, que sigue erguida, sujetando las

riendas de la expresión. Y que va a hacer con esa expresión lo inesperado, un gesto libre,

sonreír … Eso es la dignidad, apartarse de la secuencia trazada por quienes quieren

hundirte, humillarte; desviarte del destino que tienen calculado para ti. (107-108)

The characters of El ángulo ciego constitute one of the narrative functions of greater ethical density in the narrative. It is what distinguishes and privileges the theoretical reflections of other discursive forms such as ethics, because it allows incarnations of behaviors and exemplifications of values and counter-values in human figurations. In Etxenike’s novel the characters cooperate decisively

97 in the formation of the narrative ethic that allows the author to reflect on the consequences of terrorist violence because mother and son, Miren and Martín, offer paths of the same moral conscience, the collective self-consciousness of a generation that suffered in silence, attempting to carry on regardless. Miren reflects on her husband’s stoicism and resolvedness in his daily life,

“Cada día venía a casa con algo nuevo: un libro, una caja metálica, un filtro, lo que fuera. Para él lo más importante era que viviéramos como si no pasara nada. ‘Por lo menos entre las cuatro paredes de esta casa’, decía. Una taza rara, un minutero; cada día algo para el té. ‘Y en la cabeza.

Miren, como si no pasara nada’ me decía” (117).

Miren and Martín, as characters of the novel, form pieces of a collective group, and function as representatives of certain social and ideological attitudes. The collective consciousness in the characters is based on a principle formulated by Mikhail Bakhtin for Dostoevsky’s poetics, according to which, “el héroe le interesa en tanto que es un punto de vista particular sobre el mundo y sobre sí mismo, como una posición plena de sentido que valore la actitud del hombre hacia sí mismo y hacia la realidad circundante” (73). Similarly, in El ángulo ciego each of the characters is a position with an ethical meaning with respect to a series of moral dilemmas aroused by violence. Moral relevance is not based on the characters provoking empathy or disapproval, but rather on the fact they constitute loci of ethic reflection on the issue of terrorism. The Dorronsorro family, Martín and Miren, forms judgment upon the morality of terrorist actions.

For the justification of this collective approach of the characters in El ángulo ciego, it will be useful to refer to the theory of literary scholar James Phelan. Phelan identifies three main components in literary characters: synthetic, mimetic, and thematic. With respect to the synthetic type, Phelan notes, “Part of being a fictional character is being artificial ... and part of knowing a character is knowing that he/she is a construct” (2). That is to say, it is the artifice that gives rise

98 to or constitutes the character, once the abstraction of the illusion of reality has been made. This illusion of reality is the second component that he identifies as mimetic. In Phelan’s words, “The mimetic component of the character can be identified by mimetic dimensions and functions.

Mimetic dimensions are a character’s attributes considered as traits. Mimetic functions result from the way these traits are used together in creating the illusion of a plausible person” (11).

However, the mimetic component, which provides the character with authenticity, is not enough for a work of fiction whose components, and in particular its characters, aspire to possess a meaning beyond their individuality. For this reason, Phelan discusses the last component, the thematic: “Thematic dimensions are attributes taken individually or collectively and viewed as vehicles to express ideas or as representative of a larger class than the individual character” (12).

Although there is a close relationship between the mimetic and thematic component, there is a subtle difference as underlined by Phelan, “The distinction between the mimetic and thematic components of a character is a distinction between characters as individuals and characters as representative entities” (13). That is, the mimetic component is responsible for the characters’ authenticity as individuals of flesh and blood, while the thematic makes them behave as a collective considered in its unity and bearing an idea.

The three components identified by Phelan (synthetic, mimetic and thematic) function in solidarity and characterize every human being depicted in a work of art. However, they do not have to hold the same clout. At the same time, each critical approach decides to make its particular emphasis on one or the other. While the study of the artifice is unavoidable, this dissertation is more concerned with the thematic component since I propose Luisa Etxenike turns the protagonists of El ángulo ciego into a collective medium to convey the moral expression of a generation. Each character will be studied as a member of such a collective, which is at the same time the

99 representative entity of a generation, rather than as mimetically elaborated individuals. That is to say, in its role within the narrative of ethics, the mimetic aspect is subordinated to its thematic component. In other words, for the moral reflection on terrorist violence and the consequences on the victims exposed in El ángulo ciego the characters as individuals do not matter as much as they do as a collective transmitter of the following idea: complicity and acquiescence cause as much harm as the terrorist acts themselves.

Indeed, it is the collaboration of the characters in the coherent system of the novel that constitutes the narrative ethics. The two main characters, Miren and Martín, are taken into consideration as each of them represents a particular solution to the moral crisis they face. As mother and son, their moral values are nurtured and shared in the family environment. However, their moral paths diverge when Martín becomes a teenager and repudiates his identity and his family. Martín experiences a moral exile exemplified by his escape to Paris under the pretense of generational disagreements with his father. Martín detested violence and what young people like him had become. And yet, he could not envisage living in constant fear of being a victim, a dead body under an alley or under the growth of the bushes of an isolated hill. He chose exile and with it a tormented feeling of guilt and regret. Unlike her son, Miren remained defiant, supporting her husband while being immersed in a spiral of silence devoid of social harmony. The two of them represent the consequences of the moral breakdown of a whole generation inspired by myths of an imagined community.

Martín, in the “novel”, fulfils the role of protagonist. It is significant that from the beginning he appears as a character in conflict with the world and himself. The novel begins in the cemetery where Martín’s father is being laid to rest. Martín, the writer in the original version, describes a young man in a state of shock and denial. He does not want to be part of the spectacle

100 of grief and refuses to “perform” for the cameras. This attitude is established early in the novel as the first words of the narrator referring to Martín are “No quiere salir en la television” (13). When

Martín meets Ane, his friend from school, he appears hesitant, unnerved, and morose. The language Etxenike uses in the first scene of the “novel” entitled “Fumar entre las flores”, conveys

Martin’s state of mind, (“Vacila, No sé, borrosos, desconcertante, huérfano, naúfrago”, 14-15).

Martín needs a young and sympathetic person in whom to confide, so that he may find relief by expressing his inner turmoil and emotions. Ane is the ideal listener, one who would not question or judge him. He is unwilling to speak to his mother during the funeral, and watches the burial from afar.

Ane and Martín confide in each other and compare their parents and their childhood experiences with them. Ane recalls an instance when she went to the town square to skate with her father. She would skate while her father read the newspaper. She remembers everything including the fact that her skating boots were loose and she cried. Her father removed the laces of one of his boots and put it on Ane’s boot so that she could continue skating. Martín is surprised that Ane remembers all minor details as he does not. He confesses, “Yo no me acuerdo de cosas como ésas.

Me acuerdo de lo que faltaba; como mirar para atrás y ver solo agujeros” (18). Martín only remembers that his whole life has been shaped by his father position as the body guard of a politician. His memories can only process his identity as a moving target. Martín tells Ane that his father was always alert, “Atento, atento. Vigilando los rincones, los portales oscuros, los bajos de los coches, el lado sucio, y temible de todo ... siempre alerta” (22). That is the reason why he hates the mundane details of life because they remind him what life was like for his family.

The terrorist attack devastates his symbolic world and at that moment, he becomes more aware of how vulnerable he is in an unpredictable world. Those who are victims of violence must

101 endure the cruel and painful memory of what happened. Often, they do not know how to face those memories and for this reason the memory of the event continues tormenting them during their entire lives. In the “original version”, Miren confronts the memory of her husband’s death and commands Martín not to feel guilty for the past as victims are never guilty:

La culpa no es nuestra. Nosotros somos las víctimas, los amenazados, los muertos; los

heridos en la felicidad de todos los días, en esas tonterías que hacen la felicidad. Porque

la felicidad se hace con cositas de nada, que no van a ninguna parte: un helado al

atardecer ... La felicidad de todos los días se hace añicos. Y hay que recordarlo en voz

alta porque si no hay gente que se olvida, se olvida de lo inolvidable. De lo inolvidable

se olvida, como si aquí no pasara nada ... Como si no fuera nada que Martín esté muerto,

¿te das cuenta? Contéstame, ¿puedes imaginarlo? (158- 159).

The traumatic experiences harm the victims because the mechanisms used in everyday stressful situations are useless when violence and threat exceed the capacity of the individual to face them, physically and psychologically. Consequently, their natural defense system in situations of stress is totally removed and, from then on, their response to these situations will be dysfunctional. This in psychology is called post-traumatic emotional disorder (PTSD) or post-traumatic stress, and its symptoms are classified into four basic categories, which affect memory and are related to the memory of the situation causing the trauma: intrusive memories, avoidance, negative changes in thinking and mood, and changes in physical and emotional reaction (Mayo). The disturbing memories of the trauma affect memory directly, activating recurring memories by means of images or sensory sensations such as smells and sounds, that provoke physiological anxiety in those who experience them.

102 Martín, in the novel, repeats 12 times the words he heard when he was informed his father had been assassinated, “Eran las quince horas, cuarenta y tres minutos y unos cuantos segundos”

(15, 22, 22,26, 30, 36, 52, 65, 66, 85, 117, 125). Since that moment, Martín’s perception of the world experiences a change. He no longer sees the beach as a place of relaxation where people may find enjoyment. When his friend Ane describes San Sebastian’s beach (La Concha) with natural and almost poetic terms, “Las olas son tan pequeñas que parecen hilos, hilos de lana blanca”

(23), Martín, instead, can only think and see the beach as the last place his father saw, a place of doom and sorrow. In the words of the narrator, “Martin ha abierto los ojos ... y aunque no ve lo que ella está contando, sino un paisaje rígido y seco como un decorado, la escena del asesinato ha desaparecido. Por lo menos la escena ya no está. No ve lo que Ane describe sino una playa hecha de un material sintético y el cielo agachado y el horizonte parecido a una línea de alambre” (23).

Furthermore, he ponders about all the emblematic spaces of the city where his father will never set up his eyes again, slowy fading away, as the narrator explains, “Los paisajes desaparecen de uno en uno, como habitaciones donde de repente se funde la luz” (26). The terrorists have deprived Martin of a future with his father. He mourns, “Alguien dispara y se van todos los paisajes de tus ojos, aitá, todos los paisajes robados de tus ojos, para siempre” (26). Avoidance is characterized by evading all kinds of stimuli that could evoke trauma (places, people, thoughts or any activity associated with the traumatic event). In this way, affected people feel unable to enjoy pleasant situations, which isolates them socially. Miren, in the first part of Etxenike’s novel, cannot bear looking out the window to say goodbye to her husband, because she is afraid that one day he will be killed and that the last image she has of him will be his back. In addition, not looking out of the window can also be a symbol of the freedom that Miren has had to renounce for being married to a bodyguard. Miren explains to her children:

103 Martín salía de casa y a mí lo que más me apetecía era acercarme a la ventana, abrir un

poco la cortina y quedarme allí hasta que él cruzara o se fuera en el coche que le estaba

esperando. Pero nunca lo hice. No lo hice ni una sola vez. Y si ahora mismo alguien me

preguntara qué ha significado vivir todos estos años con la amenaza de ETA, yo diría eso:

‘Aguantarse las ganas de ir a la ventana.’ Y a lo mejor a quien lo escucha le parece

ridículo o una simpleza, como un accesorio que no va a ninguna parte. Y sin embargo a

mí ese accesorio me ha mantenido la infelicidad sujeta, pegada al cuerpo ... No fui porque

no podía soportar la idea de que si vuestro padre no volvía a casa, lo ultimo que yo habría

visto de él sería la espalda. (55)

The structure of Etxenike’s novel, divided into two differentiated parts, must be taken into account as this division raises, from a literary point of view, the idea that writing this type of texts

(autobiographical related to the consequences of terrorism and its victims), becomes the best mechanism to overcome the trauma,19 because it allows those who have suffered, the possibility of articulating the grief and pain experienced by retelling their story. In the case of Martín, the writer of the first part entitled the “novel”, writing the story allows him to overcome his pain and shame for having felt fear, for lying to his mother and his girlfriend, and for not responding appropriately to what the circumstances demanded. Moreover, writing helps him to reconnect with

19 Suzette Henke in her work Shattered Subjects: Trauma and Testimony in Women’s Life-Writing (1998) analyzes traumatic narrative as the focal point of a large body of autobiographical practice representing the genre of narrative recovery. Her research suggests that the powerful medium of written autobiographical testimony may allow the resolution or reconfiguration of the most emotionally distressing experiences.

104 the figure of his father with whom he had not maintained a good relationship due to the nature of his work and how it affected the way of life of the entire family.

Psychologists have observed that autobiographical accounts are altered by PTSD, because traumatic memories appear fragmented and totally disconnected from the global context of the victim’s life. It is a defense mechanism that transforms the traumatic memory. Etxenike portrays the change in Martín’s autobiographical memory, by changing the writing style of the second part of the story “original version”. Unlike the first part where each chapter/fragment has a title, the second part is divided into fragments of two pages, which are not separated by chapters or numbered. These fragments contain temporary and spatial jumps in action as well as repetitions of words such as “dolor”, “miedo”, “culpa”, highlighting the feeling of anxiety and the stream of consciousness in the speech, which accentuates the disorientation caused by the pain. A disconcerted Martín resorts to an inner monologue trying to come to terms with his past, present and future:

A mi padre le acaban de asesinar y como si eso hubiera destapado un desagüe, todo se

precipita por ahí, todo son pérdidas. Pienso que tarde o temprano perderé a Anne; que

vivo apretado con ella en lo que parece un apartamento diminuto y es en realidad un

alambre sobre un abismo ...Y ni siquiera puedo ver la piel de mi madre envuelta en el

acabado de la realidad; y ni siquiera he llegado al funeral de mi padre porque he hecho todo

lo posible por no llegar a tiempo al funeral de mi padre. (113)

All these details of the style that outline the personality of Martín as a victim are known by the reader thanks to the first part that helps to structure the ideas of Martín, who confronts his painful

105 family history years later. Hence the therapeutic value of literature that helps the victim to restore his memory and reorganize those recollections. By means of writing, physical and psychological benefits can release the stress that emanates from the traumatic memory and allow individuals to externalize their feelings. In this way, Martín, the protagonist of the second part is able to come to terms with his past. In order to find inner peace, Martín, the victim, becomes the writer of his own history to find the truth, demand justice and receive the reparation he deserves. He explains how he intends to compose his novel:

Una novela como un montaje de pequeñas secuencias. En la primera un chico al que he

puesto mi nombre y ella. La he llamado Ane, como Anne pero sin una ene, el mismo

nombre en euskera o en vísperas de perderlo todo. Lo sé ... Le he dicho que ya habia

empezado a escribir, que el primer capítulo de mi novela iba a llamarse ‘Las flores’; que

había llenado de flores la pantalla de mi ordenador. (122)

Furthermore, in Martín’s autobiographical writing, his memories are framed by the present and a connection is established between the remembered past and the present. This movement back and forth is what places us before an autobiographical writing, which shows Martín with a different personality in the past and who in turn explains what is the origin of his autobiographical present.

Writing in the present is what fulfills the anecdotal and chronological gaps between the past and the moment of writing. In this way, Martín’s voice informs readers of everything he has experienced in the past and thus allows them to outline his present self. In Martín’s words:

106 Y yo no contestaba nada, porque no sabía cómo decirle a mi madre la verdad: que creía

que marcharme de San Sebastián me iba a dar la posibilidad de olvidar, pero no he

olvidado. Que creía que lejos de allí tendría la posibilidad de alejarme también de la

cobardía, pero no me he alejado, al contrario, le he ido sumando cobardías nuevas ... Y

ahora a él le han asesinado unos infames. (142)

Therefore, the autobiography becomes an individual testimony, in the sense that it is narrated in the first person. However, when it refers to a historical-collective trauma, it not only reflects the experiences of the autobiographical self, but also those lived by the other people around them.

Despite seeing the narrator’s perspective in the first person, it becomes the voice of those who do not have one. It is for this reason that the narrator within El ángulo ciego is at the same time protagonist of his own story and witness of others’ stories. Martín wants to describe what happened to him and his family to reconcile with his past. The moment he confesses to his mother that he is going to write a novel about the death of his father, Martín feels a certain degree of release from all pain. A determined Martín informs his mother that “Estoy escribiendo una novela ambientada en Euskadi. He empezado ya, en el tren. He tomado notas ... Voy a contar el asesinato de aitá” (176).

All the details that arise from Etxenike’s work are the result of a reflective creation comprised not only of the narrative, but also of paratexts. It has already been mentioned the significance of the epigraph that introduces the novel, “Y la luz no usada”, by Fray Luis de León.

Another example of paratexts is the title of the novel El ángulo ciego, a metaphor related to the definition, from a physical and tactical point of view, of the dead zone or the “blind angle”. This definition refers to an area that escapes our visual perception and that by extension is invisible to

107 us. With this title Etxenike could suggest that victims inhabit blind spaces, that is to say they are ignored, forgotten and silenced. Morever, it may refer to a bodyguard who is forced to learn to forget in order to elude feelings of pain. Martín, the father, and Miren drive across the border into

France to spend time in a “frontón” where Martín, a former pelotari, dressed in white and wrapping around his waist a red or blue “gerriko” is enthralled to feel the ball in his hands and play again like he used to when he was young. During this time, he relinquishes his fears and revisits his youth when his life was not dictaded by death threats. Miren recollects what they did during those escapades, “Le miraba jugar, dar bien todos los golpes, con elegancia, y como sin esfuerzo, igual que cuando era un crio y nosotros no sabíamos lo que es morirse” (182). Martín, her husband, later confesses how happy he is playing again during those furtive moments:

No sabes lo que siento, Miren, lo que la mano siente. Como si todo lo que soy estuviera

concentrado en ese punto, en el centro de mis manos, y cada vez que le pego a a pelota

me saliera. Todo. Todo lo que os quiero, todo lo que me gusta, todo lo que pienso y en

lo que creo, toda mi libertad que nadie puede arrebatarme. Me siento tan feliz, Miren.

Se me había olvidado lo feliz que me hace jugar. (182-183)

Similarly, the blind space could be a safe area where to seek refuge from fear. In Martín’s novel, the loss he experiences makes him more aware of his father’s profession and the importance of how he looks. Martín’s father dwelt in an incomplete and weakened world since his gaze had been stolen and could only see fragments of reality. In addition, Martín feels weak and incomplete because he has been forced to live in a zone of a “ángulo ciego” as he alludes to the event that took away his father’s eyes and his life. Martín repeats, “Asaltar la mirada, asalto a mano armada de

108 los ojos ... Te roban los ojos ... Como a mi padre ... Y ahora a mí también me han robado los ojos

... sólo veo lo que no pude ver porque estaba en el monte con unos amigos” (21). In the struggle for the protagonist’s happiness, Miren plays a very important role. In the midst of disaster, the mother has a guiding role to aid her son reconcile with the figure of his father. As a mother and head of the household, she is determined to remain a righteous and principle individual rather than become a belligerent person because for her, dignity and human responsibility are the means to recover a sense of normality. When Martín in the “novel” finally takes off his father’s clothes and confesses to his mother that he had kidnapped and threatened a young man from the Herriko taberna, Miren stresses the need to remain defiant but, more importantly, dignified. Resorting to the same means used by the terrorists is to lose moral ground. She explains how everyone has free choice to act in an ethical manner regardless of their traumatic experiences:

En las emociones puedes ser cualquiera, pero en los pensamientos tienes que ser tú

mismo ... Lo que eliges ser. Y a lo mejor en otros lugars del mundo se puede vivir en

las palabras pequeñas de la vida, pero aquí no. Aquí nos toca vivir en las grandes

palabras, los valores democráticos, los principios morales. A lo mejor en otros sitios del

mundo se puede vivir en las palabras corrientes, pero en Euskadi no. Aquí tenemos que

vivir en la dignidad y la decencia constantemente. Sin parar, metidos en las grandes

palabras. Así es. (93)

After her husband’s assassination Miren is the one who must transmit to her son the story of his family’s past. Martín must know he needs to fight for happiness because fear has placed him in a position where he despises his own being. Miren is committed to free him from that position,

109 explaining that happiness is achieving normalcy, focusing on the small details that are part of everyday life. Therefore, when Martin tells his mother that he is going to write a novel about his father’s death, Miren replies:

Todos tenemos que hacer algo para enfrentarnos a los asesinos, para defender la dignidad

la decencia. Cada uno tiene que hacer lo que sabe hacer, lo que mejor hace. Tú con tu

libro; otros con lo suyo, con su trabajo y actitud ... Y la dignidad igual, a veces tienes que

pensarla y apoyarte en ella como un bastón, para ir de un cuarto a otro de tu propia casa;

para levantarte de la cama y sostenerte en pie. (176-177)

Miren wants her son to reflect and find the moral strength he needs to make his way towards normalcy. Martín is sensitive and emotional. There is an emotional cost to be paid. Martín lies in the “original version” because he is unable to admit he left his parents’ home because of his becoming a target and being killed. He needs to tell Anne the truth but does not know how, “Cómo voy a explicarle que estoy ahora mismo con mi madre, en la versión original de todo, la noche del entierro de mi padre al que ETA acaba de asesinar” (141). In other words, Martín is suppressing his emotions and holding them back. Repressing his emotions can lead to pain as well as being a source of fear and shame to be discovered. Martín’s pain afflicts him so that it has an effect on the relationship with his mother. He reflects on his moral dilemma:

La quiero con todas mis fuerzas en mi cabeza y sin embargo no puedo sentirlo. La

abrazaría, le besaría el pelo, las manos que ella dice que también son las mías, pero

no puede ser ... La abrazaría pero no puedo moverme, escayolado como estoy,

110 amurallado al yeso de mis propias fracturas ... Cómo podría decirle que también pienso

en mi padre, que sé perfectamente ahora lo que significa ser huérfano. (139)

This self doubt affects Martin’s relationship with his mother. The loss of his father is magnified because in many respects Martín was vulnerable and in a fragile state of mind. He could not bear to stay in San Sebastián. By leaving and settling down in Paris, he created a new narrative based on deceit. The distance and separation isolated him and caused him self doubts, which, in turn, made him feel guilty. Therefore, the issue of guilt in El ángulo ciego appears related to Martín.

However, guilt is not a feeling that emerges from within, but rather arises from outside influences such as cultural and social conventions and expectations. Martín feels responsible for his past actions and the troubled relationship he had with his father. He did not understand the magnitude of his father’s work, and distanced himself from him while blaming him for the family situation.

His father had to follow specific rules and procedures to avoid being an easy target for the terrorists. Martín confesses his guilt and cowardice, “Pero siento una forma de culpa en mí, una cobardía en mí como una culpa ... Aquel día descubrí ... que podía ponerme del lado de los que no iban a defenderle” (161). Martín directs his supressed pain against himself in the form of hatred and contempt for having been a coward and causing the rift with his father and family. He confesses his shame, “Y sobre el miedo sentía vergüenza. Vergüenza por esta provocando todo eso con tal de tapar mi cobardía. Capas y capas de miedo y de vergüenza, como la hojas aquel día en Urgull, capas y capas. Me enterré debajo de todo eso, vivo, me enterré” (156).

Burying himself under the leaves signifies Martín’s metaphorical death. He buries his

Basque identity by renouncing his family and culture and thus revealing the tragedy of the Basque conflict. Martín writes the fictionalized version of his family’s story and the murder of his father.

111 The novel helps him, from a distance, to arrange his thoughts and emotions. Writing also contributes to reconciliation with himself since the protagonist of the novel will dare to do things that Martín did not do. In the novel Martín does not feel afraid, and he confronts the people who support his father’s murderers, he does not lie to his girlfriend Ane and he talks openly about his feelings. Martín reviews the novel and the episode at the bar:

He llegado en la novela hasta el bar porque la novela miente, es todo lo contrario de la

version original, y Martín va a atreverse. Ya he llegado a la puerta del bar con las

postales que son como los ojos vivos de su padre, tecleo y tecleo en la novela que va

a negar mi vida, la version original que es mi vida ... Mientras imagino que Martín

entra sin temor en ese bar, con las postales, con la mirada alta, viva. Porque es una

ficción. Se atreve. (132-133)

Shame, unlike guilt, is an internal feeling that makes Martín question his reality. In that respect, shame is a positive feeling that is much closer to responsibility and freedom than the feeling of guilt. Martín, feeling shame, becomes independent of cultural and social discourses that dictate how he should behave. His shame places him face to face with himself and enlightens him to succeed in making an ethical choice.

Reparation to victims is a process that includes aspects related to truth, justice and memory.

Furthermore, victims and a civil society must participate in the reparation process and in the construction of this memory so that it becomes a testimonial tool that helps to administer justice and prevents the repetition of human rights violations. Etxenike has stated on several occasions her position on the issue of victims of terrorism. She considers the writer should be on the side of

112 those who suffer20. This is why in the El ángulo ciego the point of view of the victims emerges as a compelling approach to writing a novel about terrorism, where the orphan of an escort killed in an attack feels lost at the moment immediately after the burial of his father.

El ángulo ciego is a novel about freedom to choose, free will, regardless of the circumstances. The victims overcome the murder of a family member and achieve a resolution to their own personal situations that initially seem condemned to the most absolute bitterness. The characters have the possibility of attaining a sense of happiness and hope that will allow them to continue living. Although Martín reveals his bleak and vindictive side when he faces suffering and defies fate, with much personal effort, reflection and his mother’s guidance, he manages by means of his novel to channel his pain, his hatred and his shame. From a tragic situation, Etxenike allows her characters to complete their journey, a full circle, and come together sharing their grief, but also maintaining a high degree of dignity. What stands out even more and makes their thriumph more significant is the struggle these characters have encountered.

In the same way, the victims in El ángulo ciego in addition to achieving their own happiness, struggle against threats. Miren, Martín’s mother in both “novel” and the “original version” achieves a degree of “liberation” from her sorrow by confronting outside threats with her dignity and refusal to accept violence as a way of life. In the “novel”, she warns Martín against using violence or intimidation, “Un hijo mío no va amenazar ni herir a nadie, esto te lo aseguro, ni mucho menos lo peor. Eso te lo aseguro. Tú vas a ser una persona decente” (93). The “original version” begins and ends with Miren’s smile. After the funeral, at home, Martín reflects, “La

20 See Francisco Griñán’s interview with Luisa Etxenike, “Tenemos la responsabilidad de contar la memoria del terrorismo y no callar”. Diario Sur, 3 April 2018. Diariosur/es/culturas/libros/luisa-etxenike-responsabilidad-20180 403222602-nt-html.

113 sonrisa y la dignidad a menudo juntas, sosteniendose ... Mi madre sonríe ... Un gesto libre, sonreír”

(107). The final lines of the novel return to the smile motif. After their mutual confessions, Miren and Martín smile together as Martín prepares the camera to film his mother. Miren smiles and explains why she does so, “Te extraña que sonría, pues que no te extrañe. Pienso en tu padre y sonrío. Como si alguien tirara algo mío al suelo y yo lo recogiera. Como si alguien me diera un empujón y yo me enderezara” (186).

114 Chapter III

Bernardo Atxaga – Soinujolearen semea/El hijo del acordeonista

Ya ves, las palabras no siempre surgen en solitarias áreas industriales; no son necesariamente product de las oficinas de propaganda. Surgen a veces entre risas, y parecen vilanos en el aire. Mira cómo marchan hacia el cielo, cómo está nevando hacia arriba. (Poem in El hijo del acordeonista, 8)

Bernardo Atxaga epitomizes the figure of the author with extensive impact within the

Basque literary system and beyond. Besides the quality of his literary work he has been the main promoter of Basque literature. In addition to conferences and lectures he spent nine months as a resident at the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada (2007-2008). With the publication in 1989 of the Spanish translation of Obabakoak (1988), Bernardo Atxaga’s literary works reached out readers beyond the limited public of Basque readers. Having been an experimental writer and part of the Pott group in Bilbao in the late 1970s, Atxaga published several books before writing Obabakoak, including Ziutatzeaz (1976) and a remarkable avant-garde book of poems entitled Etiopia (1978). In his second phase, Atxaga opted for a literature that combined nostalgia for his rural childhood with aspects of literature of fantasy and magic, learned from authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, at the same time he appeared very much open to the influence of oral literature. Nevertheless, Obabakoak, winner of the National Narrative Award in 1989, put on the literary scene of Europe a highly talented author whose capacity for formal experimentation makes his stories, novels and poems, which focus, at first glance, on the rural world of the Basque

Country, acquire tremendous universality. In fact, Obaba, the village where most of the Obabakoak

115 episodes take place, has been compared to some of the most universal literary loci of the 20th century, such as the Comala de Rulfo, the Macondo de García Márquez and the Yoknapatawpha

County of Faulkner (Olaziregi 41).

Although it is undeniable that the success of Obabakoak aroused great interest around

Basque folklore, the novel itself, through its postmodern kaleidoscope of literary times and spaces, uses Obaba as an anecdotal example that represents the universal, or in Atxaga’s own words, “Es el agujero de ratón que te da acceso a lo universal” (Qtd. in Martin, “Modulations” 194). The publication in 2003 of El hijo del acordeonista represents at first glance a return to that mouse hole, or a mere idealization of the Basque peasant in the face of the universal invading modernity.

Much of the early reception of the novel has been limited to the slow decline of the rural world of the Basque Country as Ignacio Echevarría highlights in “Una elegía pastoral”, a controversial review that appeared in El País shortly after the publication of the novel:

Las circunstancias que, hacia finales de los años sesenta, pudieron empujar a un sano e

ingenuo chavalote vasco a militar en ETA: tal parece el asunto que Atxaga pretende

ilustrar, echando mano de la experiencia de toda su generación y, eso sí, dejando claro su

actual distanciamiento de la actividad terrorista tal y como se viene desarrollando desde

el establecimiento de la democracia ... La beatitud y el maniqueísmo de sus planteamientos

hace inservible El hijo del acordeonista como testimonio de la realidad vasca. A este

respecto, la novela sólo vale como documento acrítico de la inopia y de la bobería -de la

atrofia moral.

116 However, this reading, even if the legitimacy of Echevarría’s argument may well be relevant, seems limited to the content at the expense of ignoring the formal peculiarities presented in the work. As it will be highlighted in this chapter, El hijo del acordeonista is a title that is used multiple times within this same work. It is understood, of course, that it is the title of a novel by Bernardo

Atxaga. However, it is at the same time the title used for autobiographical memoirs written by

David (the Basque “chavalote” to which Echevarría refers) and the one used for a novel that his best friend, Joseba (a character that gives life to the implied author of Atxaga) writes based on this book of memories. Therefore, the story readers encounter is a polyphonic text, and one that is particulary transformed. It is a narrative made of intertwined voices, one of which belongs to a character, David, who intends to leave a memorialist imprint before his impending death, explaining his particular version of the tragic modernization of the idealized peasants of the Basque

Countyr. The other voice, however, that of Joseba, belongs to a character who openly admits that in literature “siempre es necesaria una transfiguración” (465). Although within the fictional framework of Atxaga’s novel it can be assumed that David’s narrative represents reality (insofar as this is possible), and Joseba’s represents fictionalization, or novelization of that matter, my interest here is to highlight the fundamental elements of this novelization. Thus, I will examine the structural features of this novel (Joseba’s) to determine what makes it a work of fiction instead of true memories.

In the following pages, I will analyze in detail the structural elements of the novel, starting with the frame, that is, the first chapter narrated in the first person by Joseba, a well known Basque author. In the first chapterof the novel, “El comienzo”, Joseba reveals the story of the development of the novel the reader finds. While staying at David’s ranch shortly after his death, the wife of the deceased gives Joseba one of the three copies of his memoirs which is to be taken to Obaba’s

117 library. After reading the memoirs Joseba decides, with the consent of the widow, to use the memories of his friend as a basis for his next novel. The rest, or almost the rest of the work is narrated in the first person from David’s point of view, but given the metaliterary impulse suggested in “El comienzo”, the reader is aware that Joseba’s literary resources are not far from the mere surface of the given narration.

3.1. Memory and fiction

One of the few parts of the rest of the work that is not narrated in the first person, by the voice of David, is an interposed story entitled “El primer americano de Obaba”. This story is a text that David composed in the third person based on the stories and letters he kept of the outbreak of the Civil War in Obaba. In other words, what David does with the empirical history of his hometown can be matched to what his friend does with his memories after his death. Therefore,

“El primer americano de Obaba’, a chapter located right in the middle of the novel, may be read as a microcosm of the novel itself. In the next pages, it will be shown that the underlying structure that drives the components of this metafiction story can be applied to the rest of the novel.

Through an analysis of these two chapters (“El comienzo” and “El primer americano de

Obaba”), and their associations for the rest of the novel, I intend to propose a reading of El hijo del acordeonista that recognizes the central importance of the particular and distinct form in which

Atxaga composed this novel. So far, the criticism has focused on the fable of David, on the tragedy of the pastoral and romanticized world of Basque peasants to such an extent that in some cases, such as Echevarría’s review, El hijo del acordeonista has been dismissed as a retrospective sentimentalist text about the Basque Country during the last years of the dictatorship. David

Guinart considers the novel as an example of Basque literature attempting to recover the recent

118 past. In the words of Guinart, “la novela es un ejemplo de cómo la literatura vasca está encarando el fenómeno de la recuperación de la memoria histórica sobre el pasado reciente, mostrando la complejidad que este pasado plantea” (18). On the other hand, Txetxu Aguado examines the novel as “la narrativa de construcción de una identidad posible para los personajes David y Joseba y, por extensión, para la comunidad comunicativa establecida entre lector y escritor” (92). What I intend to do in the following pages is to examine the novel’s structure to reveal that through the poliphony of this novel, Atxaga questions the empirically historical validity of what David tells us. In other words, by means of the metaliterary nature of this novel, Atxaga describes a particular story that idealizes David’s memories and simultaneously questions them, retelling the universal power of fiction through Joseba’s novel.

El hijo del acordeonista is a novel that concludes at the very beginning of the story, with an aptly titled chapter, “El comienzo”. This chapter consists of the reflections of an intradiegetic narrator, Joseba, about the recent death of his best friend, David. At the end of this chapter Joseba realized that his friend had left three copies of a memoir with the intention that he took one of them back to the library in his hometown, Obaba. The more than four hundred pages that remain in

Atxaga’s novel are concerned with presenting the novel by Joseba, which ends with the presumed death of its protagonist, narrator and memorialist, David. That is to say that the novel begins with

“El comienzo”, which in turn is the end of the story.

As Iñigo Barbancho observes, this paratext (vis a vis Joseba’s novel), “El comienzo” evidences the prevalence of the narration above the story, that is, to the syuzhet over the fable (80-

81). The composition, reorganization and novelization of David’s memories predominate over the content. In the next pages, I will show how this first chapter is very important to form a clear

119 understanding of the novel itself. I will now examine this first chapter to highlight the main ideas that arise in it, which will condition the reading of the remainder of the work.

Ironically, this “comienzo” of the narration, which is, as it has been explained, the end of the story, starts with an analeptic section that takes place in 1957, returning again to the beginning of the story. It is in this first section of the first chapter that the reader first encounters the two characters whose voices will be discussed throughout the rest of the work:

La nueva maestra andaba de pupitre en pupitre con la lista de los alumnos en la mano. “¿Y

tú? ¿Cómo te llamas?”, preguntó al llegar junto a mí. “José - respondí -, pero todo el

mundo me llama Joseba”. “Muy bien”. La maestra se dirigió a mi compañero de pupitre,

el último que le quedaba por preguntar: “¿Y tú? ¿Qué nombre tienes?”. El muchacho

respondió imitando mi manera de hablar: “Yo soy David, pero todo el mundo me llama

el hijo del acordeonista”. (9)

In addition to introducing the two protagonists of the novel, these first lines establish two key elements for the interpretation of this novel: first the constant dialogism whose echoes are perceived in the various facets of the novel and even within the same characters; second, the conflict between two ways of understanding time. Regarding dialogism, as indicated above, a large part of the novel is composed of David’s memoirs, which have been edited and “improved” by

Joseba. That is to say that within the same narrative voice (David’s) a certain dialogue is observed between the two characters; the writer (David) and the editor (Joseba), who reads and presumably rewrites the memories of his friend in a fictionalized way, making it difficult to separate one voice from the other. The same seems to stand out in the presentation of the two children sitting in the

120 classroom. Each one is introduced with two different names. The first names are “José” and

“David”, two traditional catholic and consoicuoulsy Castilian names, underlining the prohibition of the Basque language in Francoist Spain. Each boy, however, responds to the teacher and the reader with a second name that associates them closely with their respective fathers, that is to say with their tradition and Basque identity.

Atxaga, whose given name is Joseba, has noted that “era su nombre en la Facultad de

Ciencias Económicas de Bilbao, cuando los nombres tenían una significación política. En esa

época, Joseba sugería vasquismo e izquierdismo” (“Preguntas”). Moreover, El hijo del acordeonista exposes the presence and influence of the father in the life (and even in the name) of the boy. As readers will learn later, the parents of the two children in question supported opposite sides during the Civil War; Joseba’s father was a republican, whereas David’s was a supporter of

Franco. Each child is defined by traces of the past that he carries with him. Throughout the novel there is a constant tension between the attempt to recover or preserve the memory of the past and the opposite of this desire, that is, the desire to escape from it. Just like the narrative voice that prevails in the rest of the novel, each boy is clearly marked by linguistic, national and generational multiplicity. History and the future of their people will play a decisive role in the lives of these two boys. The conscious and constant references to bilingualism by these two boys cannot be ignored. Each of them occupies simultaneously two linguistic worlds, that of Basque and that of

Castilian. This bilingualism is obvious in the name of Joseba and will be fundamental, as it will be explained later, in the development of David’s identity. Moreover, readers of Atxaga’s work will know that the linguistic question cannot go very far from the focus of the work. In other words, the coexistence of two or more languages both in the author and in his characters, escapes the limits of his understandings and is ubiquitous throughout the work.

121 Amongst the pages of El hijo del acordeonista, references to doubles appear repeatedly, whether in reference to twins, brothers, bilingual characters or characters that reinvent themselves multiple times. Atxaga intends to carry out a historical investigation of the years of the Civil War and Francoism, but refuses to do so univocally. On the contrary, by means of the narrative multiplicity, this novel demystifies the history of the 20th century, celebrating its fictionality. With the denial of the possibility that there is an impartial univocal word, it may be deduced that when examining the historical discourse, Atxaga favors the propositions of Roland Barthes, who observes that, “Historical discourse is in its essence a form of ideological elaboration, or to put it more precisely, an imaginary elaboration” (“Discourse”138).

Examining the place where the readers first encounter Joseba and David, it may be argued that its location has not been chosen at random. The classroom, an axis of socialization of children of any society, is where Joseba and David are commanded to provide their names, that is, they are required to identify themselves and therefore begin to write their own stories, supporting certain identifying threads on a multiplicity of others that are necessarily excluded. The two, however, refuse to be categorized, or to simply be confined to the names of José and David. The two boys ignore the teacher’s identifying request, preferring to look at the world kaleidoscopically from a multitude of points of view. This view is, as the rest of the novel is analyzed, a consideration that the implicit author creates throughout the work. Based on the observations of Barthes that I have quoted above, there is a second key issue, the conflict between two epistemes that are distinguished from each other fundamentally by the way in which time is conceived.

Such as the inherent polyphony of the novel that I have already underlined, this conflict between the two ways of understanding time is raised in the first section of “El comienzo”. The narrated episode takes place on the first day of the term at a rural school, that is the moment when

122 the regimented schedule of the bells and the teacher puts an end to the endless days of summer, and a schedule that is based on the movement of the sun is changed by another that responds to school bells. It should be noted that this first part of the novel reveals when the events are taking place as the narrator observes, “Al lado de la pizarra, la hoja del calendario señalaba que estábamos en septiembre de 1957” (10). The characters, of course, are not aware of this date, or any other date. The time marked by the calendar is unkown to them, something that is imposed by people in a position of power, such as their teacher. Nevertheless, observing them from the last years of the

20th century, both the narrator and the reader are aware of the historical date announced by this calendar that these two young boys happily ignore.

The calendar, the course, and the teacher at the front of the class are all signs of history, of the creation of a narrative and therefore of a time in which time is understood in a linear way, or, according to Barthes, of an ideological elaboration. It is appropriate, however, to consider this idea to the level of the whole town. In other words, although in this first section the two boys, who sit side by side in the Obaba desks, are on the edge between the idle cyclical time of summer and the linear time that rules the school, during the entire novel a Basque community that remains on the same epistemological frontier is introduced to the reader. The idealized Basque peasants are being corrupted by the modernizing influences spreading from Madrid. The bucolic pastoral environment surrenders to the unrestrained development that characterized the explosive modernization of the 1960s. Memory, sustained by traditional culture and language, gradually yields to the levelling of history. These two terms (memory and history) are important as I continue the analysis of this novel. On the relations between memory and history, French historian Pierre

Nora explains that these concepts are:

123 Far from being synonymous, appear now to be in fundamental opposition. Memory is

life, borne by living societies founded in its name. It remains in permanent evolution,

open to the dialectic of remembering and forgetting, unconscious of its successive

deformations, vulnerable to manipulation and appropriation, susceptible to being long

dormant and periodically revived. History, on the other hand, is the reconstruction, always

problematic and incomplete, of what is no longer. Memory is a perpetually actual

phenomenon, a bond tying us to the eternal present; history is a representation of the past

.... Memory is absolute, while history can only conceive the relative. (8-9)

It is evident that Nora gives importance to the linearity of historical time in face of the eternal present, the temporal circularity that predominates in the realm of the eternal circularity of memory.

Revisiting the first section of El hijo del acordeonista, the two boys who avoid surrendering their complex identities also seem unwilling to join the story. As it has already been indicated, the narrator, Joseba, a mature man and well versed in the historical nature of modern society, provides a link to the historical referent when he mentions, “el calendario señalaba que estábamos en septiembre de 1957”, while the two young characters (David and a younger version of the narrator) remain distant from the limits suggested by that calendar. In other words, it is the narrator (the adult Joseba) who from the outside comments what the calendar revealed, without the young characters realizing it.

If the first section of “El comienzo” and of the novel takes advantage of a retrospective focus to emphasize the multiplicity of the subject and the conflict between two perceptions of time, the second and the third bind these two concepts directly to the linguistic expression, thus giving way to the direct contemplation of the written word as a double-edged sword that simultaneously

124 pierces and heals memory. Returning to Nora’s distinction between memory and history, in these two sections Atxaga reminds readers that the written word and the narrative in particular are ways of creating history, that is, of recounting the events of the past, which are organized in a linear fashion as actors of the story march in almost an army-like fashion. On the other hand, however, it may be argued that it is by creating a literary device that it is possible to transcend the ideological elements of the historical narrative to remain in the realm of memory and therefore in the “eternal present” (Nora 8)

Between the first and the second section of “El comienzo” takes place a flashforward of 42 years. The character-narrator finds himself in front of David’s tomb, the young accordionist who had been introduced a page before: “Cuarenta y dos años más tarde, en septiembre de 1999, David había muerto y yo estaba ante su tumba en compañia de Mary Ann, su mujer, en el cementerio del rancho Stoneham, en Three Rivers, California” (10). Closely examined, Joseba’s observations make it clear that memory’s ellipses and limitations are inevitable once they are considered to be materialized in writing. The narrator contemplates the fact that a lengthy funeral prayer that David had composed before dying must be shortened considerably when it is carved on his tombstone.

The first line of this prayer, “Nunca estuvo más cerca del paraíso que cuando vivió en este rancho”

(10), is recorded on the stone in three languages: English, Basque and Spanish. It could be argued that the transfer of the funeral prayer to the tombstone is nothing more than a copy of a previously written statement from one surface to another, and that therefore has nothing to do with the tension between oral memory and the memory transmitted by the written word. However, it is to be assumed that for all those who attended David’s funeral, this prayer was read orally, some ephemeral words of which only the trace of the first sentence would remain, which is recorded on the tombstone.

125 Moreover, immediately afterwards, the difficulties that the sculptor had when making the three translations fit on the same tombstone are discussed. When Joseba does not like the use of the word “rantxo” in the Basque version of the prayer, Mary Ann, David’s wife, invites him to replace it with one that seems more appropriate. The narrator proposes abeletxe, a word that in his opinion is closer to the meaning of ranch that David would have wanted. Nevertheless, it turns out that, since the suggested substitution is a longer word that would not fit on any tombstone, they have to use “rantxo” despite their semantic deficiency. In other words, the original prayer communicated orally during David’s funeral, when it is recorded on his tombstone, is shortened at least twice. In short, first, when writing on the tombstone, the entire sentence is reduced to its first sentence. Then, when translated into Basque, the very content of the words is influenced and determined by the way in which they are to be written since, in lapidary inscriptions, brevity matters more than semantic precision. In other words, the form determines the content. When narrating a series of memories, it is about writing or figuratively, about carving on a tombstone some fragments of what remains of the reality of the past. At the same time, these fragments are completed and smoothed, giving a diachronic meaning to a contingency of images that circulate synchronously through memory.

As Atxaga comments in an interview with Michael Eaude in 2001, still two years before the publication of El hijo del acordeonista, “Obaba is an interior landscape. You don’t remember all the places of the past, but what sticks in the memory is this window, that stone, the bridge.

Obaba is the country of my past, a mixture of the real and the emotional” (“A Bridge”). Joseba, the narrator of “El comienzo”, and alter ego of Axaga is equally aware of this phenomenon when he explains that he “Llevaba cerca de un mes en Stoneham, y mis conversaciones con David habrían llenado muchas cintas. Pero no había grabaciones. No había ningún documento. Sólo

126 quedaban rastros, las palabras que mi memoria había podido retener” (12). He recognizes that the memories he retains of his conversations with his late friend are nothing but a trace of the real and he regrets that there is no document, nor any recording that will preserve them. The idea of the trace left when one dies, what will be called a carving, becomes very important in the rest of the novel, and is what generates and motivates David to write his memoirs. Joseba recognizes that any reconstruction made of his nostalgic conversations with David will be highly fictionalized versions of the empirical past. Paraphrasing Hayden White, the narrative in this case works as a mediator between reality and imagination, between the conversations that really took place between David and Joseba, and those that he recreates when editing his friend’s memories (4).

Once the close relationship between the conversion of memories in history and the act of writing, that is, of narrating these memories, has been established, it is worth reflecting on the way in which Atxaga proposes this theme through a series of leitmotifs in the second and third sections of the novel. After the sculptor’s observations on tombstones and his reflections on everything that he had forgotten about his last days with him, Joseba finds out something that David had never told him. Next to the graves of the previous owners of the ranch, Joseba observes small piles of soil where David had buried two dead hamsters and some broken toys to comfort his daughters.

Mary Ann tells Joseba that behind these tiny graves there is a cemetery of words where lies

“vuestra lengua”, that is, some Basque words that from her point of view had become obsolete

(13). Upon realizing that his daughters were breaking the toys for him to bury them, David tried that game so that his culturally American daughters would learn at least a little Basque. The funeral of words and the unearthing that Mary Ann invites Joseba to carry out are microcosms of the entire novel. Although the “death” of old Basque words that had germinated in the rural environment has been caused by the loss of this agricultural society and with it the replacement of the peasant

127 memory with history, David declares “death” with the intention of resurrecting the words in question. That is to say that the burial of words is a way of teaching them to his daughters thus preventing them from dying altogether.21.

In the same way that Joseba exhumes the word mitxirrika (butterfly) and the phrase Elurra mara-mara ari du (something that it is said when there is a light snowfall), he also corrects David’s memories by rescuing them from silence. Given that Joseba is a well-known Basque author, his version of David’s memoirs will make his friend’s memories available to more readers. (David had only printed three copies, which seemed arrogant to him). Presumably, David, a novice author, has created a narrative in which certain events are highlighted and others are omitted. He resorts to the imagination to develop some memories and confine others in the lost places of his mind. By narrating his memories, he gives them a linear order, a beginning and an end. Ironically at the hands of the written word, David’s memories are subject to the same forces of progress and modernization that he himself recriminates greatly in the pages of his book. Joseba, on the other hand, serves as the implied author behind David’s narrative voice. It corresponds to the experienced author to edit the story of his late friend. Joseba (and finally, Atxaga) completes it with leitmotifs, mises en abyme and other intertextual references, intertwining a system of meaning that, when read with care, disdains the idea that an empirical history can be written.

In El hijo del acordeonista, the story of David operates diachronically. However, the text that Joseba creates from this story is a work of art, a novel that, being such, as Jameson points out,

21 It should be noted that Basque words and especially the ones that David chooses are fundamentally oral. On the one hand, they are put on the pieces of paper to be buried, dying to be written. On the other hand, it cannot be overlooked that David chooses to write his memoirs, “El hijo del acordeonista”, in the Basque language even though his family cannot understand it. He takes this decision for two reasons: first, to encourage his daughters to learn Basque in such a way by resurrecting some of the old words, second, to preserve these words in a written form.

128 has a point “at which durée and diachrony break off, and which can therefore be momentarily seized in synchronic terms” (75). By infusing David’s narrative with his own presence as editor of the manuscript and presumably arousing that mnemonic narrative with the leitmotifs mentioned earlier, Joseba makes readers take a step back to see the work in its entirety as an aesthetic object instead of as a simple autobiography that develops in a linear manner. Like the dead and buried words that Joseba discovered and brought back to light, David’s memories, whose narration had transferred them to the domain of history, are seen again in a synchronic way, thus returning to the

“eternal present”. That is why “El comienzo”, a chapter whose title suggests the pre-eminence of the form and the rhetoric of the novel over the content, establishes the foundations of the novel.

Like the words that David and his daughters had buried, the death of the character brings some regeneration in all the most important facets of the novel as both David and his memoir find new life as a character and a work of fiction, respectively. Similarly, the memory whose destruction at the hands of the modernizing history is told throughout the work is reborn when its disappearance becomes a tragedy.

In the following pages, I will examine how this idea of the regeneration of everything and the pre-eminence of the circular over the linear forms the structural core of the work as Atxaga uses them to make art on the basis of the story. Next, I will highlight how the structural framework that Atxaga uses in El hijo del acordeonista highlights the primacy of circular memory over linear history.

3.2. Transformation of the self

One of the first characteristics of El hijo del acordeonista is the obvious coexistence of many texts within the novel. That is to say that Atxaga’s novel consists of several narratives, some

129 of which are supposed to have been written, translated and edited by various characters. As already mentioned, it is in “El comienzo” when Joseba finds David’s memoirs and proposes to publish them as a novel. This novel, and by extension that of Atxaga’s, is above all a mediated narrative.

In other words, when reviewed by Joseba, the narrative moves further away from the truth on which David had based his text. Thus, in this novel there is a hierarchy of fictions, a stratification of texts, some of which are more fictional than others, according to how many times, with what intentions and how they have been modified. For example, let’s suppose that when writing the section entitled “Mary Ann” within the chapter “Nombres”, in which David narrates his first encounters with his wife, the narrator uses his memories with the intention of recreating a past reality, and telling the story. However, as mentioned before, remembering an event is to remember the residual traces of this event. The old photos David examines and that inspire him, as he writes, are physical manifestations of these memory traces. The one who remembers, in this case David, develops these traces until they are stories that can be narrated. In other words, a narrative is in any case a fiction, regardless of how much it tries to be truthful. In the words of Theodor Adorno,

“For all reification is a forgetting: objects become purely thing-like the moment they are retained for us without the continued presence of their other aspects: when something of them has been forgotten” (321).

Consequently, when Joseba edits and revises this narration raising a whole series of details, the readers assume that the text moves one step further away from the empirical truth. This level of fictionality can be seen in much of the novel and in the subchapter on Mary Ann mentioned above. In addition, there are fragments of the text that reach the reader with a much greater degree of intervention, for example, the chapter entitled “El primer americano de Obaba”. I have already commented that David’s memoirs were one of his first literary attempts, an attempt to tell the story

130 of his youth. However, “El primer americano de Obaba”, his first literary work, predates them.

The two texts, however, are very different. On the one hand, David’s memoirs, before Joseba revise them, are only fictional to the unavoidable extent in which all historical narration is presumed to be true. “El primer americano de Obaba”, on the other hand, is mimetic fiction, a literary tale in which David puts on the mask of an extradiagetic and disinterested narrator who tells the story of a certain Don Pedro, a freethinker who manages to escape from Obaba when the

Civil War breaks out. This character, Don Pedro, is a fictionalized version of a man named Pedro

Galarreta who was a friend of Juan Imaz, David’s uncle.

David created his fictional Don Pedro, protagonist of “El primer americano de Obaba”, after his uncle’s stories and a letter received from Pedro Galarreta. It should be noted that David wrote the story in Spanish and that his wife, a professor of literary translation, translated it into

English so that it could be published in a local magazine. Then, as the entire novel was first published in Basque, a language that Mary Ann does not know, it can be deduced that this story was translated by Joseba to be incorporated into his novel, although it cannot be confirmed as they are fictional characters, after all. If “El primer americano de Obaba” had previously been published in English, it is likely that Joseba translated it into Basque without making any ensuing changes, in theory making this text the most fictional and the most faithful to the original form in which David left it.

Atxaga has frequently commented on the problematic nature of literary translation. In an interview in Argentina in 2001, Atxaga referred to the words of Spanish philosopher Agustín

García Calvo, who “dijo que naturalmente todas las traducciones eran imposibles, sólo que la cuestión importante no era esa, sino que era saber cómo son imposibles. Es decir que ante una imposibilidad, lo que hay que ver es qué hace cada escritor” (Torres, “De Traducciones” 4). As

131 discussed before, the progression of fictionality corresponding to the multiple texts included in El hijo del acordeonista is dictated by the ways in which the text has been mediated. As previously explained, the chapter entitled “El primer americano de Obaba” represents the most fictitional text of the novel. It appears in the middle of the novel, placing itself at the height of the narrative.

Moreover, by examining attentively this story and denoting its underlying structures, a pattern is revealed that repeats again and again throughout the entire novel. This chapter narrates the story of Don Pedro, a sympathizer of the republican government, and how he fled via the Spanish-French border during the Civil War. It is worth mentioning that Don Pedro is back in Obaba after having emigrated to Canada where he earned a fortune in the mining industry. Upon his return from North

America he buys a hotel, Hotel Alaska, where he usually organizes parties and gatherings for his free-thinking friends. In these meetings, he becomes famous as a great storyteller. His stories, full of literary techniques used to capture the attention of those who listened to him, focus on the nostalgic memory of the years he spent in Canada. Later in the story, Don Pedro’s inner voice warns him of the danger of being suffocated by these memories, just as what happened to a bee preserved in amber and whose image remained engraved in his memory:

Winnipeg, decían los sapos. Win-ni-peg-win-ni-peg-win-ni-peg. Entrada la noche, con

más estrellas en el cielo, más templado el viento sur, más oscuros los bosques cercanos

al hotel, don Pedro comprendió: los nombres lejanos, y los recuerdos asociados a ellos,

estaban actuando con él igual que el ámbar con la abeja. Si no les hacía frente, acabarían

por asfixiarle. (242)

132 Memories are, for both Don Pedro and David, an unhealthy obsession that must be controlled by narrating them. When narrating them, however, they are like the words Joseba unearths after the death of his friend, and acquire a new life. The memories inhabiting Don Pedro’s head and which he narrates, are preserved forever in the written version David makes of them, just like the bee preserved in amber. In other words, as alluded to in the introduction to this chapter, when writing the elusive inner language of memory is relegated to the textual linearity and inherent ideology of linguistic representation while being preserved for posterity. That is to say, memory suffocates as well as preserves.

Don Pedro does not have to dispose of these memories because the outbreak of the Civil

War forces him back to Canada. The tale of this getaway is where the structure to which I alluded to before can be found. In order to put it in its proper context, however, it is necessary to resort to the domain of archetypal myths as described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand

Faces (1949). Campbells develops his archetypal myths from Carl Jung’s The Archetypes and the

Collective Unconsious (1954). According to Jung “The archetype is essentially an unconscious content that is altered by becoming conscious and by being perceived, and it takes its colour from the individual consciousness in which it happens to appear” (5). Continuing with concepts of myths and archetypes Campbell describes a primordial myth, “the myth of the hero” or “the monomyth” that manifests itself in many cultures throughout the world and throughout history.

The myth is a series of common elements that often appear in many of the mythical heroic stories of the world. According to Campbell “the myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into the human cultural manifestation” (1). Some of these elements are the loss of the plenitude of being, the descent into hell (which Campbell calls

“the belly of the whale”) and the reemergence/reinvention of the hero having transcended his

133 previous form. Campbell observes that after emerging from the “belly of the whale”, “The hero has died as a modern man, but as eternal man - perfected, unspecific, universal man - he has been reborn ... is to return to us, transfigured, and teach the lesson he has learned of life renewed” (15).

Atxaga seemed to give credit to this notion of monomyth indirectly observing that “Lo que una persona conoce, de primera mano, es siempre luna manifestación de lo universal ... La experiencia

El mundo tiene una unidad. La cultura es universal ... la gente habla diferentes lenguas, se casa en diferentes ceremonias, come cosas distintas. Pero lo diferente, lo singular, sólo tiene un sentido superficial” (qtd. in Albizu and Ziswiler 65). Examining El hijo del acordeonista, it is evident that a series of transformations leads to the structure mentioned above, that is, a paradise lost, a descent into hell, and a personal reinvention that is restated repeatedly. Jon Kortázar observes that Atxaga is a proposer of Chinese boxes, that is, of multiple congruent meta-narratives that can be visualized as the Chinese toy, or as Russian dolls. In the words of Kortazar, “Es una de las técnicas que más le gustan al autor, el relato dividido y unido en dos historias” (“Literatura” 56). Having outlined the main structure of the novel, I will establish that “El primer americano de Obaba”, one of the most evident manifestations of the monomyth and found at the highpoint of the text, it is the smallest “doll” of the series. In this case, the hero, Don Pedro, has two lost paradises and descended into the underworld twice. The first loss is only revealed through the analeptic reflections of the character. Don Pedro earned his fortune working in the Canadian mines. Despite his success in

Canada, Don Pedro considers Obaba his lost paradise. When he returns to his homeland shortly before reaching the age of sixty, he confesses, “Cuando embarqué en América rumbo a Obaba, pensé que dejaba atrás el destierro y volvía a casa” (242). In other words, Don Pedro leaves behind his Basque paradise to descend into hell - the Canadian mines - and then emerges from them to return to Obaba, reinvented himself and methaphorically baptized as “El primer americano de

134 Obaba”.22 This manifestation of the myth of the hero, however, is secondary to the history that shapes its essence. As Don Pedro informs readers, when returning to Obaba he fosters certain doubts and ponders that, “Quizás América sea mi verdadero país, y ahora vivo en el destierro”

(242).

It would appear that Don Pedro’s notion of his lost paradise evolved. While he was settled in Canada, it was Obaba, but once he returned to his homeland, America seemed to be the promised land. It is worth noting the parallel between Don Pedro and David. In section II of the subchapter

“Mary Ann”, David tells Mary Ann about an experience similar to that of Don Pedro’s, and one that according to him, every immigrant experiences:

Dije que los emigrantes siempre llevan consigo una idea infantil – ‘Aquí la gente es mala,

allá donde voy será más honesta; aquí vivo miserablemente, allí lo haré con holgura’-, y

que de esa fantasía surgía una primera idea del paraíso. Pero que luego, al cabo de los

años, un tanto desengañados del nuevo país, conscientes de lo difícil que resulta empezar

de nuevo, se producía el movimiento contrario, como el del péndulo del reloj que

teníamos delante, y entonces era el país natal el que empezaba a adquirir rasgos

paradisíacos (54-55).

22 The parallelism between the two titles “El primer americano de Obaba” and El hijo del acordeonista cannot be ignored. Both are alternative names for characters that reinvent themselves several times. We must also remember Atxaga’s comments mentioned before about the importance of names and their significance.

135 From the outset of the Civil War, Don Pedro’s nostalgia for Canadian lands and its characters and landscapes permeate the stories with which he entertains his guests. When the war broke out, abandoned by both his friends and employees, the Hotel Alaska appears to Don Pedro as, “la antesala de algún otro lugar. ¿Del reino de la muerte? Tal vez ... Cuando el viento sur sacudía las contraventanas, se le figuraba que era la misma Muerte, llamando a su puerta” (249). When he attempts to leave behind the figurative “antesala”, he is arrested by the Falangists of Obaba, realizing the idea that he was very close to death. After spending days locked in a wardrobe, the guards forced him to return to his house, now converted in the headquarters of Captain Degrela who was in charge of the national front in the region. Just like Aeneas at the door of Hades or

Dante’s passing through the vestibule of hell, Don Pedro has returned to his “antesala” where he awaits to be executed. Despite his fears, he does not enter in the realm of the dead. Miraculously,

Don Pedro manages to flee during the executions and seeks refuge in a rural dwelling in Iruaín, a hamlet on the outskirts of Obaba. Inside this house, the young Juan Imaz (metafiction version of

David’s uncle) offers protection and hides him in a secret space constructed during the Cartist

Wars.

It is appropriate to pause, momentarily, to comment on the atmosphere of the hiding place in which Don Pedro spends many weeks. Although for Don Pedro the Hotel Alaska may be considered the entrance hall into the realm of the dead, without a doubt the hiding place represents

Hades himself, not in the Judeo-Christian sense of hell, but in the mythical sense. In other words, his time in this zulo23 leads him to salvation rather than condemning him to eternal hell. While

23 In terrorist mythology zulos became notorious for being the prisons of kidnapped victims of ETA and stores of weapons used by the terrorists.

136 Don Pedro is in hiding, he is deprived of three things that had been fundamental to him in making sense of his world: food, light and time. Don Pedro exploited conversations about his weight to initiate “captivating” stories about his years in Canada. That is to say that alluding to his overweight worked as a strategic narrative, an entrance, to enthrall listeners and begin his personal story. In the hiding place, Juan brings him apples and carrots, with the intention that he loses his most identifiable physical trait, that is, his stocky frame. For Don Pedro, however, fat represents much more than his physical appearance. Weight, as it has been underlined, was a fundamental source of his ability to narrate his life. Don Pedro’s weight functions as a symbol of narrative equilibrium in his life. The losses of light and time confined Don Pedro further given that the sun rays filtering through the bars were the only way that allowed him to remain aware of the weather outside. Similarly, his ability to count the days is clouded. Time goes by and he is unsure of how long he has been confined, as the narrator explains, “Pasaron unos días, tres, o cuatro, quizás más, y llegó un momento cuando el contenido de las marmitas ya estaba por la mitad, que don Pedro se sintió a salvo” (270).

Although the little bit of sun that manages to enter the hiding place is enough to be able to estimate the days that pass by and be aware of what the weather is like outside, the narrative capacity that used to be the foundation of his identity is reduced to that of a mere analyst. It should not be overlooked that the hiding place reminds Don Pedro of his time in the mines of Canada.

There is an implicit connection between his two descents as the narrator reminds the readers,

“Tenía la impresión de que el suelo del escondrijo se había hundido y de que volvía a estar bajo tierra, como cuando era joven. Pero en el maldito agujero no había ni plata ni oro; sólo manzanas y zanahorias” (274). The last trace of his previous captivating narrative power has turned into a list of apple and carrot meals that he scores on a list in a small notebook. The narrator explains that

137 “Sus observaciones las anotaba en la libreta con su pequeño lapicero” (273). Thus, the notebook is Don Pedro’s chronicles (annals) of his time in hiding. Hayden White observes on the fundamental difference between annals and narrations that:

What is lacking in the list of events to give it a similar regularity and fullness is a notion

of a social center by which to locate them with respect to one another and to charge them

with ethical or moral significance. It is the absence of any consciousness of a social

center that prohibits the annalist from ranking the events he treats as elements of a

historical field of occurrence. And it is the absence of such a center that precludes or

undercuts any impulse he might have had to work up his discourse into the form of a

narrative. (11)

That is to say that by losing the ability to narrate stories, a power that identified him as the focus of the gathering before the war, Don Pedro loses something of his identity, his place in the social order. For the first American of Obaba, the hiding place is, in effect, the realm of the dead, the descent of the hero prescribed by Campbell’s idea of monomyth. This is worth discussing in light of Richard Kearney’s theory on identity and narration, with emphasis on the aspect of collective identity. It may be possible to interpret Don Pedro’s story from a national perspective:

Once one recognizes that one’s identity is fundamentally narrative in character, one

discovers an ineradicable openness and indeterminacy at the root of one’s collective

memory. Each nation, state or societas discovers that it is at heart an ‘imagined

community’ (Benedict Anderson’s phrase). And that means that qua narrative construction

138 to be reinvented and reconstructed. After such discovery of one’s narrative

identity, it is more difficult to make the mistake of taking oneself literally, of assuming

that one’s collective identity goes without saying. This is why, at least in principle, the

tendency of a nation towards xenophobic or insular nationalism can be resisted by its

own narrative resources to imagine itself otherwise either through its own eyes or those

of others. (26)

When Don Pedro emerges from the hiding place on the day that Juan had set for the escape to

France, he has lost all traces of the identity he previously asserted in the gatherings of the hotel.

He has lost weight and his appearance has changed in such a way that when he sees himself in the mirror for the first time, the narrator discloses that “No se reconoció. En el espejo vio a un hombre de rostro fatigado y barba blanca, ni gordo, ni flaco, que aparentaba más años que él. ‘Las patrullas buscan a un hombre gordo y bien vestido. Pero tal hombre no existe ya’, dijo Juan sonriente. Él siguió mirándose en el espejo, intentando asimilar lo que veía” (277). Later, Don Pedro asks Juan for the notebook where he had written the last traces of his identity by annotating numbers of apples and carrots. The long stories narrated in the gatherings in which Don Pedro had constructed and determined his identity, were reduced, first to a mere number number of appless and carrots

(the chronicle as conceptualized by White), and then finally burned, leaving him symbolically transformed into an illiterate man. Juan explains to him that:

La he quemado junto con la ropa. Ya sabe, usted es ahora mi tío ... mi tío Manuel. Y mi

tío Manuel no es capaz de escribir una sola letra. No ha hecho otra cosa más que cuidar

ganado durante toda su vida. Insisto en que vas a hacer mucho dinero en América. Eres

139 muy listo. Siento lo de la libreta. Me habría gustado saber cuántas manzanas y zanahorias

he comido durante el tiempo que he estado en ese agujero. - Juan señaló el reloj de la

pared. Eran las siete. Hora de agrupar las vacas y emprender la marcha. (277)

In this way, Don Pedro, the hero, losses his earthly paradise (Canada), descends to the infernos and finally is reborn as another person, reinvented after being subjected to several labors. The underlying structure of this story is consistent with the monomyth of Campbell and Jung: the character finds his new subjectivity when he returns to Canada, while the archetypal Don Pedro

Galarreta is immortalized in the story of David. But here one might question why linger so much in a peripheral story? What does the fact that Don Pedro’s story follows the pattern of the myth of the hero have to do with the heart of the novel? This same structure is repeated throughout the novel in narrations that are mediated by multiple narrative voices. In other words, although David’s writings are a kind of “talking cure”, “El primer americano de Obaba” is the narrative that can best be attributed to David himself. It is, as has been said, a pattern that arises many times in the work just from below the surface.

Four “reinventions” experienced by the protagonist-narrator can be traced, each one marked by a “descent into the underworld”, be it a literal or metaphorical descent. The first of these descents is when young David immerses into the history of Obaba, and consumes too much history as he learns that his father was involved in the execution of nine people in Obaba. “The descent” in this case is double, the first of which is ironically the result of an ascent. Teresa,

Berlino’s daughter, the most prominent Francoist of the town, is very close to young David and even begins to desire him sexually. She leads him to a closet on the top floor of the Hotel Alaska

(controlled by her father since the Civil War), where she shows him some letters and a notebook.

140 For the first time, David suspects that his father was involved in the executions. This epiphany inspires David to make his first historical inquiries. David delves into this story to such an extent, a metaphorical descent, that the story begins to fragment his personal narrative. While earlier he had described himself as “el hijo del acordenonista”, now he wonders if he really wants to be associated in this way with his father and his sordid past. His identity as “el hijo del acordeonista”, a construction representing the unity of a son with his father, crumbles in such a way that the young man begins to see things with other eyes, his “Segundos Ojos”. The idea of “Segundo Ojos” is mentioned for the first time after his uncle Juan had spoke to him about the war:

Mi madre, Carmen, solía decir: “Yo creo que tenemos otros ojos al lado de estos de la

cara, unos ojos nocturnos que en la mayor parte de los casos nos muestran imágenes

perturbadoras. Por eso me da miedo la noche, porque no puedo soportar lo que ven mis

Segundos Ojos”. Quizás yo he heredado su carácter, porque a mí me sucede lo mismo,

precisamente desde el día en que el tío me enseñó el escondrijo y me habló de la guerra.

Empecé de pronto a temer la noche, porque mis Segundos Ojos me mostraban un lugar

oscuro que me impedía dormir: una cueva inmunda, repleta de sombras, que en nada se

parecía al lugar que me habían enseñado Lubis y Pancho. Allí estaba el americano; allí

también los nueve fusilados mencionados por Susana; allí, por fin, el padre de Teresa y

de Martín, Berlino, y el mío, Ángel. En mi imaginación, los primeros lloraban y los

segundos reían. (93)

Indeed, David’s “Segundos Ojos” show him the unspoken story of which Teresa had hinted at him.

What concerns me here, however, is the fact that David understands this imaginary space as a cave,

141 a descent into the historical memory where the point of view is bifurcated and the desire to continue being “el hijo del acordeonista” is finally destroyed. As in the case of Don Pedro, “leaving the paradise”- in this case, the oblivious childhood -, and the “descent into the infernos” result in a readjustment of the character’s identity.24 A second subject is constructed that reveals a secret history, part of history that the Francoist discourse had excluded and forgotten when composing the nationalist narrative. “Sólo veía con mis Segundos Ojos; sólo pensaba y recordaba con mi

Segunda Mente; sólo sentía con mi Segundo Corazón” (167). This second individual frightens him because of the tremors he feels in the deepest part of his being. David takes refuge within univocal and clearly structured narratives, avoiding all contact with his uncle or with those in the village of

Iruaín. It is in Iruaín where the doubts first arose and led to the creation of the double that he sees with the “Segundos Ojos”. As David remembers:

Dejé de ir a Iruaín, sobre todo por el tío Juan. Me daba miedo acercarme a él. Temía que

me contara algo doloroso; que rescatara de la historia reciente un nuevo objeto, como

hizo con el sombrero J.B. Hotson, y que yo no fuera capaz de soportarlo. Con aquel

ánimo, me pasaba casi todo el tiempo en Villa Lecuona, leyendo en la cama un grueso

libro titulado Los cien mejores relatos policiales, o viendo la televisión que Ángel

acababa de traer a casa. (167)

24 It is during the same period that David is introduced to Basque literature by his uncle, Juan. His uncle gives him a book written by poet Lizardi (one of David’s daughters will be named Liz). The book is entitled Biotz-begietan - En el corazón y en los ojos, and it is another reference to the “Segundos Ojos”. Thus, forming his Basque identity progresses parallel to him asking questions about his father (100).

142 It should be noted that mundane objects such as the frames of television, photos, boxing rings, etc. are a very prevalent leitmotif in the novel. In general, they seem to give way to a certain type of narration. Be the simple narration of a television show or a boxing match. This same image is used to highlight the process of writing the complex mnemonic narrative that David has been plotting as he looks at the old photos and looks at the framed screen of his computer. In this novel, with its various fictional frames, the quadrilateral forms have a special importance, perhaps evoking the discussion of the garden and the window that Ortega y Gasset makes in “La deshumanización del arte”. That is to say that insisting on the presence of this quadrilateral forms, these frames that so resemble the diegetic form of the novel, readers shift their attention from the content to the fictional novel, or using Ortega and Gasset’s metaphor, their attention now moves from the garden towards the glass of the window through which we are looking at it (Ortega y Gasset 21).

The neighborhood where David lives with his parents, and the predictable narrative structures of the police accounts and television programs help him unify the threatening and unpleasant reality of the problematic story presented by his “Segundos Ojos”. This metaphorical descent of his historical enquiries, however, leads to another more concrete one. When David is invited to play the accordion (the Spanish anthem, nothing less) at an inauguration of a sports field that the regime has built in Obaba, the young man hesitates whether to appear in the photo of the newspaper that will surely be released with all the representatives of the local government at the end of the ceremony. Like the television programs, the idea of a photo frames him and places him within the same Francoist narrative that he has begun to question. The day of the event, David asks

Lubis, one of the “bucolic peasants” of Iruaín, to lock him in the hiding place of his uncle Juan’s house, the same hiding place that David fictionalized years later in “El primer americano de

Obaba”. When he emerges from the hiding place, he is told that someone had distributed Basque

143 propaganda during the convocation, and that he, inexplicably absent from the ceremony, was one of the most suspected individuals. Although his mother takes him to the commissioner to clarify the situation as soon as possible, David is transformed, reinvented and reborn. His “Segundos

Ojos” and the first ones have united, just as when Don Pedro emerged from the same hiding place, from a similar descent to the infernos, David has created a new identity. This new identity is that of a young university student, fully aware of the historical dilemma of his homeland. This is not the only monomythical transformation that transpires in David’s life, but, as I will show in the following pages, there are three more.

David emerges from the hiding place a grown-up teenager. This period is marked by two particular situations. The first is his love for a villager named Virginia, a young widow whose husband, a sailor, was suspected to have drowned. The second is the gradual corruption of the happy peasants of Iruaín. It is evident that David continues to feel the same conflict between his father’s past and his leftist political leanings. While observing a group of friends, he regrets his own confusion:

Veía delante de mí a la gente que se abrazaba; veía a Ubanbe y Opin hablando con la

pandilla de chicas; veía a Joseba y Adrián tomando algo en la terraza, y también, a veces,

a Lubis. Sentía envida de ellos. Me parecía que vivían en el puro presente, en el verano de

1970, y que todo lo que habían vivido con anterioridad se había deshecho ya en su corazón

y en su mente; que el pasado era en ellos un fluido que circulaba por su espíritu sin traba

alguna. Mi espíritu, en cambio, seguía siendo una masa, una papilla espesa. El odio

que sentía hacía Ángel enturbiaba la buena relación con mi madre y me llevaba aún

algunas veces, a la cueva inmunda, como cuando tenía catorce o quince años. (297)

144

In his next descent to the infernos, David escapes the realm of the metaphoric to enter a physical hell. As stated, David falls in love with Virginia and is delighted to have spent the third night with her. Virginia is asleep when he leaves home at two in the morning. Immediately he notices commotion down the river and approaches the area. At once he realizes something is happening and approaches the scene to find several police officers rescuing the drowned corpse of his best friend, Lubis, the most idealized of the happy peasants of Irauín. As alluded to before, there is a series of sequences in which David’s concern for the moral corruption of the rural world is exposed. Among the young peasants with whom David had spent the summers of his youth, one becomes a boxer at the service of the conservative hierarchy of the town (a group that includes

Ángel); another, Lubis’ brother, has become a lazy alcoholic; while the young Sebastián is considering setting up a mechanic’s workshop. In addition, among the bucolic peasants there is a general increase in alcoholism, cruelty to animals and sexual depravity. Only Lubis maintains his aura of happy and innocent peasant. However, when a group of nationalist terrorists appears in

Iruaín under the pretext of an etymology study, Lubis is caught up in an activism that causes his tragic drowning at the hands of the authorities. The next morning, waking up in Virginia’s bed, the paradisiacal landscape that David contemplates through the window is interrupted by the arrival of Joseba. His school friend asks for help so that other activists can escape. Joseba, who now forms part of the group of terrorists and is now called Etxeberría, informs David what was the real cause of Lubis’ death, and the two leave for Iruaín “sin girar la cabeza hacia la casa de

Virginia” (374), that is to say, towards the lost paradise of love.

With time, David changed his name to Ramuntxo and got involved in the armed struggle.

Again, the hero left paradise (lover’s bed) and descended into the whale’s belly where he witnessed

145 the infernal image of Lubis’s death. This time, however, the reinvention of the hero, leads quickly to another hell, that of violence and fear. Ramuntxo’s rejection of terrorism and non-violent involvement can be interpreted as metaphors of the lost paradise. This honeymoon with the armed struggle ends very soon and Ramuntxo (David) dreams that he is a deep-sea fish swimming towards the depths guided by another fish who speaks to him with the voice of Lubis. In the first place, the intertextualities with the works of Dante and Virgilio could not be clearer. Then, in this dreamlike descent, David presages the death of his mother. When he wakes up, he phones Obaba and learns that she has really died. Ramuntxo and Etxeberría, that is, David and Joseba cross the border to attend the funeral of David’s mother, a key moment that makes David reconsider his association with terrorism. Following this manifestation, he surrenders to the authorities and after about fourteen months imprisoned, there is another rebirth, a reinvention in which the hero is exiled from the Basque Country to California.

David’s memories, among the pages this whole story has been read, is a physical symbol of the last representation of the myth of the hero. Remembering the funeral prayer that was discussed before and that had to be shortened to fit on David’s tombstone, it is not necessary to dwell too long to establish that family life, where he was surrounded by nature, is one of the clearest examples of the paradise lost in the whole novel. However, after watching a television program that talked about some Basque carvings recorded in the trees of Nevada, David decides to make his own carving, that is, the book he has been writing throughout his illness. The hours and hours spent reviewing his old photos and recounting the years of his youth and the atmosphere of Obaba at that time represent a repetition of the historical research that tormented him years before when he was haunted by his father’s stories and involvement in the first months of the Civil

War. Again, David dives into history, descending into the profound depths of his own memory

146 while fighting against an infernal and relentless cancer. The last words of his memoir, the one that

Joseba publishes after the death of the memorialist, are “Y mañana a Visalia,” a city near his ranch in California where David was going to have surgery. If the writing of his memoirs and the reexamination of his youth represent his fourth and last repetition of the myth of the hero, a question arises, “how is he reborn?” As it has been said, the last words of the novel are those that the narrator supposedly writes the night before his death. However, returning again to the beginning of the novel, to “El comienzo”, Joseba, his lifelong friend, makes a work of art from

David’s memoirs. He takes the diction, the story of David, and turns it into fiction. David Imaz is reborn for the last time in a fictitional form, converted into an aesthetic object. The myth of the hero, as Campbell draws, provides a useful model for examining the underlying structure that is repeatedly used throughout the work. Examining “El primer americano de Obaba”, the smallest

Chinese box (as referred by Jon Kortazar), the most fictional and least mediated representation of the monomyth, reveals a structural pattern that uncovers the framework that supports the entire story.

As it has been said, both David and Joseba drop hints throughout the text, inviting readers to examine the novel beyond its tragic content. David restores his memory by looking through the photos that were taken throughout his life. Photos that he and Mary Ann took during their first blissful days in San Francisco, and photos that were made of the classmates in the Obaba of his youth. His narration is enclosed in the white frame of a Polaroid photo, or in the white frames of many photos. In a certain sense these images work like the Basque carvings that David contemplates in the trees of Nevada, or, returning to the terminology of Pierre Nora, they are lieux de mémoire - sites of memory, in the clearest sense of the term. They represent a frozen moment,

147 a concentration of memory that has managed to have been preserved and protected from the raging progress of history and in which the same memory is anchored. 25

Nora states that “There are lieux de mémoire, sites of memory, because there are no longer, milieu de mémorie, real environments of memory” (7). The only one left is the trail of memory.

The photos, the abbreviated prayers that are engraved on the tombstones and even the buried words that Joseba digs up, are small lieux de mémoire, miniature monuments that enclose the traces of memory. Like the school days discussed in the first part of this chapter, or like the television programs and detective stories that the young narrator reads, these photos provide him with a structure, a starting point, a memory from which it is possible to begin to develop his narrative.

This narrative, through which David seeks to put his life in order so that his daughters can read it and understand the order of his story, never ends. David’s story is like a Polaroid photo where one side of the white frame is missing. The end of David’s narrative, “Y mañana a Visalia”, that is, “And tomorrow to be operated on” is left unfinished. Could not Joseba have finished it as he surely did with many other elements of the text? Ultimately, even though David, with his impetus to tell a story, would had finished the narrative of his life, Joseba, the author of fiction leaves it deliberately open. However, as much as it has been proposed that Joseba functions as the alter-ego or Atxaga’s implicit author, it cannot be overlooked that ultimately it is just another fictional character created by him. In other words, although I have been stating the influence that

25 It should not be forgotten that the center of Obabakoak’s action is a photo that had been taken as they were leaving shool. Moreover, at another time Joseba comments his intention to write a novel based on a photo of the classmates of the Obaba school.

148 Joseba’s mediation have on David’s memoirs, it is Atxaga, after all who manipulates the narrative.

Although Joseba has his text and makes his editions, Atxaga also has his, and this text, the novel that we have in hand, is also left with an incomplete framework.

As discussed extensively at the beginning of the chapter, Joseba addresses the readers in the first person in “El comienzo” to explain how he has come to edit the manuscripts of his friend.

Readers will have asked themselves, however, if Atxaga writes a chapter entitled “El comienzo”, why is there nothing called “El final”? While David and Joseba leave the narrative open without telling the end of the protagonist’s life (David), Atxaga does the same, leaving the text open, without enclosing it within the television frame or with the Polaroid photos. Therefore, by trying to make his novel more difficult to stereotype, he refuses to put a fixed limit on his text. He refuses to frame it completely, making his multiple stories of the monomyth, his Chinese boxes in which it is discovered that “The hero has died as a modern man, but as eternal man - perfected, unspecific, universal man - he has been reborn”, are taken out of the frame of fiction. In conclusion, such as the Chinese boxes through which readers have observed a fictional character’s universalization through his own metafictionalization, Atxaga imitates the narrative techniques of his two characters and leaves an open ending instead of closing the text with another extra textual narration. The end of the novel cannot be determined entirely, thus emphasizing the inclination towards aesthetic subjectivity instead of the thesis novel. Bernardo Atxaga, after all, like the bee, like Don Pedro, like David and like Joseba, does not allow himself to be suffocated in the syrup of memory. He descends to the peculiarity of the history of Obaba and re-emerges having plotted a metamemorialist work of tremendous universality.

149 Chapter IV

Patria, by Fernando Aramburu

Voy a ser breve. Yo no fui el que disparó a tu marido. Da igual quién lo hizo pues tu marido era objetivo de ETA. No se puede echar el tiempo atrás. Me gustaría que no hubiera ocurrido. Pedir perdón es difícil. (Excerpt from Joxian’s letter to Bittori, chapter 104, 525)

In this chapter I will examine Fernando Aramburu’s Patria, a novel published by Tusquets in 2016, and winner of the National Award for Narrative in that year. The narrative focuses on two families living in an unnamed Basque town near San Sebastián, and takes place during the course of three decades, from the mid-1980s to 2011, a few months after ETA declares the end of their terrorist’s activities.

Literature is a source for the historian, as is the press, photography, painting and documentation contained in public and private archives. As I wrote in the first chapter of this study, the literary texts of Fiodor Dostoyevski and Benito Pérez Galdós (among others) are essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand social history and collective attitudes of the 19th century. Likewise, some literary works are useful to better understand political history, and more specifically the history of terrorism, the objectives of terrorists, the social support they had, and what acts they committed and against whom and the way that terrorism was fought. This is the case of Dostoievsky’s Demons, Pío Baroja’s Aurora Roja, and Albert Camus’ Les justes. Camus’ play deals not only with issues such as how the leaders of terrorist organizations justify their violence, but also explores the moral dilemma that, sometimes, the terrorists raise with respect to the consequences of their acts and on the non-validity of all the means to reach a political objective.

150 It has been more than a decade since the approval of the “Ley de la memoria histórica”26, and even longer since the beginning of the aptly denominated ‘boom de la memoria’27 in the context of Spanish cultural discourse, an attempt to reclaim, vindicate and, more importantly, to open a social debate about the events and experiences that took place during the Civil War, the dictatorship years and the transition to establish a democratic government. Despite the period of time elapsed since the law was approved, the number of literary works and films dealing with the collective events of the past attempting to recreate past memories continues increasing every year.

Aramburu’s Patria represents a testimony of the reconstruction of the collective memory based on fiction. In analyzing this novel, I propose to demonstrate the validity of a cultural commitment with socio-political issues, in this particular instance, terrorism. This debate is of special relevance in our post-war writers, is still valid in its ideological and literary components, being determined both in the production of some writers and in the reception of their works. This point of controversy has led to numerous theoretical reflections on the intrinsic value of literature, as well as the power of culture and the means to act in reality, continuing to this day, perhaps more than ever, with the prominent importance of mass media and information in the current digital era.

This study will focus on illustrating the ideas of memory and commitment and their relationship with literature, and to further develop their expressions in Spanish literary history, paying special attention to the post-war situation and its connections with contemporary literature.

The obsession of these concepts and their reflection through history will allow me to develop a

26 Law 52/2007, which recognizes and broadens the rights and establishes measures in favor of those who suffered prosecution or violence during the Civil War and the Dictatorship. 27 See collection of essays by Huyssen, En busca. Huyssen explores the so called “memory boom”, and the public, political and commercial exploitation of that cult of memory. Huyssen points out that the main concern with memory in our current culture and politics presents a turn towards the past that contrasts with the tendency to privilege the future, so characteristic of modernity.

151 study on the most frequent topics and the narrative strategies proper to this literary aspect, which

I will contrast with the analysis of the novel. I intend to pay special attention to its reception, with the inevitable extra literary component that represents the commercial success of this type of novels, pausing to reflect on the different discussions about the use and abuse of the memory as a literary topic: commercialization, privatization and depoliticizing of historical memory in the literary field. This proposal is, therefore, in the line of research that seeks to analyze the prominent role of social commitment in contemporary Spanish and Basque narrative, in a state of established historical, democratic and economic positions in which memory through literature emerges as an important means for the construction of a cultural identity and a reflection of the life and customs of our society.

The concept of memory as a representation of the absent and “metaphor of the past” is already featured by numerous authors who have studied its implications in literature (Klein 15-

24). That same idea of ‘displacement’ or ‘transfer’, which is one of the original values of the word metaphor μεταφορά in Greek, is the source of the hermeneutic thought of French philosopher Paul

Ricoeur, the “hermeneutics of distance”,28 key to understanding the narrative construction of memory and the link between subject and object, as well as the importance of the relations between the producer and the reader of the literary text. For Ricoeur, the object referred to by the narrative identity is purely fictional and constitutes an autonomous reality in that what is recovered in the story is not the object but a mental representation of it. In this way, he identifies memory as a creative process (in the Aristotelian sense of poiesis) through a system of referents that the receiver must interpret. This is what Susana González denominates ‘refigurar’ according to their individual

28 From which Irene Klein in La ficción de la memoria (2014) and Susana Ynés Gonzalez in Literatura y memoria: espacios de subjetividad, develop their theories.

152 ability. Just as memory entails reframing of reality on the part of the subject, its narrative expression is linked to the reframing of the text by the reader, creating in this way several ‘spots of indeterminacy’: From the unrecoverable past event to the reference to memory (from Latin refero, ‘to bring back’, from memory to the structuring of facts as the Aristotelian mythos and from it to its subsequent interpretation by the reader.

The ability of fiction to represent memory is in turn characteristic of all representation and therefore common in general to literature and figurative art. However, this fact has not prevented people from depositing their trust in collective memory (strictly orally first) and, later, in written literature (which recalled the facts) as mechanisms of reliable fixation of past events. This confidence in the texts as a faithful testimony of facts and knowledge of reality is the indirect origin of philology and the literary canon.

The canon (from the Greek ‘measuring rod’ κανών) has always had a connotation of measure and rectitude. It represents, in origin, the selection of valid testimonies on which rests the identity of a community. In religions, the existence of a canon is of paramount importance due to the identification of sacred texts (Torah, Old and New Testament, Koran) and its fixation aims to avoid the loss of the message due to the limitations of human memory. These texts, instruments of collective memory, interpret reality and, at the same time, have an artistic side that can serve as model for literary emulations. Beginning in the II Century B.C., there was an interest to focus on the texts from a philological angle (textual criticism, translation, hermeneutics) the texts that

“matter”, that is, that “represent the model better”. Writers were concerned that their works endure for the ages. Thus, the belief in the power of the word as a way of transmitting knowledge and capable of acting on reality continues through time to this day.

153 The will to manipulate relevant past events is intrinsic to human beings and has been manifested from the origins of the history of Spanish literature. One can recall the historical works of Alfonso X (General Estoria, Estoria de España), which include classic characters and myths, but also and especially the “cantares de gesta” (El Cantar de Roldán, El Cid, los Siete Infantes de

Lara, etc.). Of particular importance are also the situations and customs that narrate the romances of the Romancero viejo and thus all literature that seeks to use past experience to understand the present, including the moral aspect of the “exempla” hagiographies. A factor not to overlook is the supremacy of the dogmatic component of scholastic philosophy and the consequent contempt of those works of exclusively aesthetic value throughout the medieval period.

The transition from the Middle Ages to modernity will bring as a consequence one of the greatest exponents of the use of memory as a resource to capture the most immediate reality and provide a claim of truth to the narrated facts. See, for instance, the picaresque novel genre, with works like El lazarillo de Tormes (1554), Guzmán de Alfarache (1599, 1604) by Mateo Alemán, and La vida del Buscón (1626), by Francisco de Quevedo. The autobiographical nature of these works provides a subjective voice that in turn allows greater social criticism.

Positioning ourselves temporarily upon Renaissance humanism allows us to talk about

Horatian dualities and what the revaluation of the two components that affect the understanding of the function of literary works supposed. In this period, both the moral and ethical aspects of the transmission of knowledge through literature (docere) and the aesthetic value of the work itself

(delectare) are taken into account. This search for a balance of values in literary works will eventually become a vindication of the intrinsic value of literature solely for its artistic (aesthetic) aspect. That which represents so well the initial phrase of the prologue of the El Ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (1605): “Desocupado lector”; as well as the consequent degradation of

154 the importance and reliability of memory, so clearly exposed at the beginning of the first chapter of the same book (“En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme”). This declaration of intentions, which represents the origin of the modern novel in Spanish literature, has a series of antecedents that derive precisely from the books of chivalry; the works that Cervantes in turn chose as model and critique. The first example of romance literature of the declared acceptance of the fictional nature of literary creation is found in the 12th century, in the roman by

Chrétien de Troyes. This author declares “faire un roman” (“I will make a roman”), instead of

“mettre en roman” (I will adapt in the form of roman”). His works had the noticeable objective of aesthetic pleasure (in his reading or recitation in front of court ladies) and at the same time they represented models of behavior, imitated later in the books of chivalry. The fictional side inseparable from the construction of the story is explicitly admitted in his creations as the transcendence of the literary fact (res ficta) and also represents, in this way, a direct antecedent of the modern novel.

4.1. The concept of Spanish ‘social novel.’

In the first chapter of this dissertation, I dedicated a section to discuss the social novel prevailing during the postwar period, discussing the studies and anthologies by Gonzalo Sobejano and Pablo Gil Casado. Gil Casado identifies the precursors of social literature in “la novela picaresca de los siglos XVI y XVII, en tanto que primera manifestación de tipo social que correspondería al deterioro de la sociedad Española de los Austrias, hasta ésta, nuestra época, de mediados del siglo XX” (69). However, strictly speaking, the origin of the Spanish social novel is

155 mid-twentieth century.29 There was a sense of moral imperative in postwar writers, as Francisco

Álamo Felices observes when he explains that “el convencimiento de que esos momentos eran críticos y definitivos para la historia de España, le llevó a muchos autores a atribuir una función social al arte, a anular las visiones abstractas de la problemática nacional y a marginar el mero placer estético” (128). In order to understand its origin, it is necessary to clarify what the Civil War and the Franco regime meant for the Spanish cultural scene, who these writers were, what their proposals were and in what works they materialized.

The misfortunes of war casted a shadow over the conscious or unconscious of all postwar writers. In its most immediate consequence, the existentialist current of the first postwar years is present in such works as La Familia de Pascual Duarte (1942) by Camilo José Cela or Nada

(1945) by Carmen Laforet (winner of the Nadal Prize), which explored the consequences of the desolate Spanish general panorama in the misfortunes and the misery, the frustration and the disappointment, from the intimate experiences of the families of the postwar period. At the beginning of the 1950s, in a more documentary way and with less direct criticism (probably due to the power of censorship), the so-called Neorealism was born. This movement focused on showing the reality of human conditions: the sordid and hypocritical urban life and the suffocating monotony of rural life. Within the novel of this neo-realist genre we find important works such as

El camino (1950) by Miguel Delibes, Las última horas (1950) by José Suárez Carreño, La ferra

(1951) by Luis Romero, Los bravos (1954) and Cabeza rapada (1958) by Jesús Fernández Santos,

29 In the European context, it is important to mention the concept of engaged literature (littérature engagée) formulated by Sartre in his essay “Qu’est-ce que la literature?” (1948) as origin of the idea that the writer has a moral responsibility to society.

156 Cuentos completos (1949-1969) by Ignacio Aldecoa or the very important Entre visillos (1957) by

Carmen Martín Gaite and El Jarama (1956) by Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio.

The adoption of behaviorist techniques and later of the objectivism proposed by critical realism that Castellet endorsed, conditioned the works that were written in this period. Works that were divided in two different lines of enquiry according to whether they focus more or less on denunciation of class struggles. Thus, there was a social realism, of more direct and mordant criticism, in novels such as Juego de manos (1954) or El circo (1957) by Juan Goytisolo, Ayer,

October 27, by Lauro Olmo, Las afueras (1958) de Luis Goytisolo, Dos días de septiembre (1961) by José Manuel Caballero Bonald or Germinal y otros relatos (1963) by Alfonso Grosso.

Simultaneously, from a socialist realism that had emerged as a fundamental artistic pillar in the

USSR and that was promoted, from a materialist perspective of a Marxist nature, by thinkers such as the Hungarian philosopher Georg Lukács, named by Goytisolo in the citation. This literary movement produced works such as La piqueta (1959) by Antonio Ferrés, La mina (1959) by

Armando Luis Salinas, La zanja (1961) by Alfonso Grosso himself, or Central elétrica (1958) by

Jesús López Pacheco.

The First International Colloquium on the novel took place in Formentor (Mallorca) in

1959 to debate about the future of a novel in need of readers and with a method that looked outdated. It cannot be said, however, that the social commitment that had marked the previous decade was abandoned. Martinéz Cachero states:

El país está como está y la novela –la literatura, en general- ha de salirse de sus quicios

habituales y propios para extraviarse en el cumplimiento de menesteres que le son ajenos

pero que anda desatendidos – el compromiso social; en Francia, país que está de otro

157 modo, no es preciso tal extravío. He aquí la diferencia y en ella, tan importante, se asienta

la incompatibilidad de pareceres entre unos y otros coloquiantes. (167-168)

Social commitment was transferred to a new aesthetic: realistic, but with renewed methodology.

The new experimentalism continues to deal with social and existential issues (such as failure and despair in the outstanding Tiempo de silencio (1962) by Luis Martín Santos), but in a certain way it changes the point of view precisely to criticize the hypocrisy of a bourgeois class that pretended to be socially committed, or the one which lived in the most absolute lack of projects and vital

(not to say social) interests, outside of daily leisure, thanks to the standard of living that the neo capitalist development had brought them. Thus, some works denounce the unproductive life of young people immersed in the new capitalism geared towards consumerism, such as Nuevas amistades (1961) by García Hortelano. Or the denunciation towards the bourgeois class from several levels: the criticism to the enrichment from the circumstances of the Civil War such as the black market in Tormenta de verano (1962) also by García Hortelano; the life equally hopeless and without clear objectives, in La isla (1961) of Juan Goytisolo; or the hypocrisy, in the ironic

Últimas tardes con Teresa (1966) by Juan Marsé.

The following years will be of importance for authors who avoid the Franco/anti-Franco dynamics, as well as direct social commitment. The novel La verdad sobre el caso Savolta (1975), by Eduardo Mendoza, is the effective demonstration of the entry of marginal genres (kiosk literature: crime novel, police, pink, fantasy, etc.) into traditional literature and its recognition as capable to harbor valuable content, and its ability to show a reality that was not what was intended to be publicized by the official media. The narration of this work is interspersed in turn through the memory of the protagonist (the story of the testimony of a trial) and the stories (mise en abyme)

158 of other secondary characters, which allows social criticism by the subjective appreciation of the voice of the character. The transition from dictatorship to democracy after the death of Franco in

1975, which led to the self-dissolution of the Francoist institutions and the establishment of an elective democratic constitutional system under the monarchical figure of Juan Carlos I, was long and complex. During this period, significant decisions were made that are reflected today in the

Spanish social novel (case of Patria). Undoubtedly, the fundamental point in the literature of the

Transition was the problematizing of its recent history. Along with the official version of a peaceful transition from Francoism to a fully-fledged democracy, which offered a series of official speeches

(journalistic, historical), a series of tensions and problems remained concealed. Literature will do what history, journalism or politics does not want: to reflect on those problems. For this task, it seeks support in those somewhat less prestigious genres. Through fictions in genres considered minor, little relevant or marginal (detective stories, historical, comic, graphic magazines, etc.) will develop a discourse that aims to demonstrate the misinterpretation of the grand official discourses.

Authors such as Manuel Vázquez Montalbán will follow suit with the series of his detective

Pepe Carvalho (detective novel), but also with the series Historias de política ficción (1977) with titles as significant as La Guerra civil no ha terminado or Aquel 23 de febrero. These works, with a strong social content, once again mixed historical themes with the fictional story. On the other hand, from the perspective of those nostalgic of the old regime but also with the same intention to denounce that the official discourse was not a reflection of reality, were the works of the Francoist

Fernando Vizcaíno Casas, authentic best sellers of the time who combined facts of history with fiction (being used by himself, the term: “historia ficción”) alternative history such as ... Y al tercer año resucitó (1978) or novels that explicitly criticize the new political model, such as: ¡Viva

Franco! (con perdón) (1980).

159

This recovery of trust in literature, from minor genres, as a carrier of a truth that was not in the “official version” is the key to understanding later novels. The reflection on “el relato

(subjetividad) que implica la historia” is the cause of the interest and success of a later historical revisionism 30 during the eighties and nineties, which will culminate with the so-called “boom de la memoria”31 at the end of the century. This affirmation is reflected in the exponential increase that the novels about the Civil War underwent at the beginning of the 21st century. This commitment is more revisionist in a testimonial sense, critical of the official version and less revolutionary than its twentieth century counterpart. I say less revolutionary and not less politicized because it has largely lost its character as a critic of the established order (from its anti-

Franco origins), and because, in fact, it is often supported by a parallel political discourse.

It is significant to see how the origin of these novels can be placed on what the “Ley de

Amnistía” of 1977 meant, its fundamental content, although it sought the social reconciliation of

Spaniards towards the establishment of a democratic period, made no provisions for the trial or revision of all crimes (political and crimes against humanity) that had been committed during the

Civil War and the Franco years. The imposition of such a brutal silence meant that (especially during the governments of José María Aznar (1990-2004) and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero

(2004-2011)) numerous organizations working for human rights (such as Human Rights Watch or

Amnesty International) requested numerous times the repeal of the law (which did not comply with the international norm of the High Commissioner of the United Nations for Human Rights).

30 For example, the series Historias de la historia by Carlos Fisas that begins at the end of the 1980 and has considerable success. 31 The exponential increase of works on past experiences and historical events.

160 The social and political pressure from this line will eventually enable the creation of the so-called Ley de la Memoria Histórica (2007), by which rights are recognized and extended and measures are established in favor of those who suffered persecution or violence during the Civil

War and the dictatorship. This law supposed the definitive support to the reopening of the cases that took place during the conflict. For Spanish narrative, it means the increase in interest in the recovery of stories from the national past.32 The fact that the memory component has a much more prominent importance in this type of social novel, which remains realistic, also allows us to explain its different narrative and style methods (Colmeiro 28-33). Faced with the objectivism of the origins of the social novel, aimed to denounce the most immediate reality, subjectivity becomes inevitable through memory, since it is the product of a human being, and with it its fictional character. The best example of this new type of testimony novel is Soldados de Salamina (2001) by Javier Cercas, a novel already mentioned in Chapter One. In this novel, this necessary subjectivity is enhanced through various narrative resources, such as the very popular technique of ‘autoficción’33. In relation to Cercas’ novel, Jaume Peris Blanes observes:

El protagonista y el narrador analiza documentos y entrevista a testigos reales, en un

trayecto que le lleva a encontrase con Miralles ... quien dará su versión de lo ocurrido

durante la Guerra y del manto de silenciamiento y olvido en que los combatientes de la

República cayeron tras la Guerra y el exilio. De este modo, el propio desarrollo del

argumento narrativiza y metaforiza el proceso de la memoria no como presencia del pasado

32 The controversy still surrounds this law, especially with regard to the opening of mass graves of victims of reprisals during the war, which the 2007 law does not allow to exhume. 33 A resource brought by postmodernity and a term coined by Serge Doubrosky in Fils (1977).

161 en el presente, sino como trabajo de búsqueda de las claves del pasado en un ambiente

social que las ha olvidado o silenciado. (44)

In this way, the subjective nature of memory serves at the same time as the engine of denunciation because the novel basically, speaks of heroes, of the possibility of heroism; it speaks of the dead, and of the fact that the dead are not dead at all while there is someone who remembers them.

4.2. Social issues in contemporary novels

The most frequent themes in this type of novel that is testimony of the past and present of the social reality of the country will revolve around the vision of conflicts in the life of human beings. This anthropocentric vision, then, will be conditioned by the events that surround the development of the life of its protagonists, and, therefore, to describe those conditions, whether in front of an official version or not, will often be the work of the thematic axis of the narrative.

In the novels that are projected towards the most distant past, the most frequent themes of the history of Spain will be the Civil War or the Transition. Whether it is by witnessing a vision that had not been offered before outside the “official version”, for example, or by being an intimate departure from the memories of the writer or the fictional character (or simply by adscription to the literary movement with success), the subjects are usually very connected to memories. The memory of critical situations, of a past that was not always better, often provides the writer with the power to generate moral reflections that compare the way of life in the past with the present and that, although they do not have to be critical, tend to develop enlightened conclusions. The most important aspect of these works is the conflict that occurs between the private and the public lives of individuals, and between their feelings and the external situation. This is how, in most

162 novels of this type, family conflicts (deaths, absences, crises), internal conflicts (love, jealousy, cowardice, fears, commitments) with the external situation (lack of employment, miserable living conditions, war, exile) are the themes that set up the conflict. Generally, the internal or emotional aspect carries the highest fictional burden and is completed in conflict with the external aspect, which carries the greatest historical “real” burden.

In the novels that are projected towards a more immediate past, the most frequent topics will be, predictably, those that generally concern societies where they are written or where they are published. To find these issues it is useful to consult the Barómetro del Centro de

Investigaciones Sociológicas to learn more about the concerns of Spaniards. The Barómetro will provide different data that will allow us to contrast the different themes of the published literary works. The data of this indicator shows that the biggest concerns (one to three) of the Spaniards in the period 2001-2004 were unemployment, terrorism/ETA and lack of public safety. During that time, social issues and issues concerning health, housing and education are not top concerns. In

2004, there was a rise (from position twelve to five) of the concern for housing (foreshadows inflation caused by the housing bubble), which climbs to fourth place in 2007, with terrorism/ETA in first place. It is precisely in 2008, the beginning of the economic crisis, when terrorism was superseded by economic problems. In 2010, the concerns for issues connected to politics and political parties reaches the third place (from the eighth) and in 2012 corruption appears for the first time. It is significant that in these years (since 2008) there has been an increase in the percentage of concern for social problems and particularly for the block health/education/housing reaching the top of the table, at the same time, terrorism/ETA was relegated to the twentieth position in 2015. If applied to the novel, when the barometers of the period between 2001 to 2007 place terrorism/ETA as the second and first concern, Fernando Aramburu publishes a collection

163 of stories entitled Los peces de la amargura (2006) that may be considered an example of social criticism. When the period comprising 2010 to 2015 and terrorism seems to decline progressively as a concern, not because the situation had been resolved (neither for victims nor for incarcerated), since the government’s position remained skeptical, but rather because of the incidence of others and possibly greater problems to attend to (mostly the state of the economy), Aramburu publishes the testimonial novel Patria in 2016.

There are series of features of style and narrative techniques that are typical of the way contemporary narratives approach social issues. Realism intends to reproduce reality mimetically with authenticity. The use of detailed descriptions of environments and the exposure of different levels of language are one of its most useful literary resources to show the relationship between people and their economic and social environment. The importance of dialogue is also a sign of a desire for the direct transmission of ideas on the part of the characters. Despite the mimetic component of this type of narrative, some evidence of literary postmodernity in the current social novel can be detected. The literary play with the different perspectives and the rupture with the limitation of the narrative is manifested in many recent works. One of the most recognizable features of this new narrative style, to which the adjective “liquid”34could be attributed, is literary intertextuality, that is, the use of references to other texts or fictional works. At the same time the playful relationship between narrator-writer-character abound in other literary devices such as auto fiction, or in the inclusion of biographical details recognizable in the novels.35 Metafiction is

34 Liquid modernity is a concept proposed by Zygmunt Baumant to describe a rapidly changing order that undermines all notions of durability. See his classic book Liquid Times. 35 In Patria, Aramburu appears as a fictional character presenting his book during an event organized by Colectivo de Victimas del Terrorismo en el País Vasco, in San Sebastián (551).

164 connected with this aspect both of them found in a novel discussed in a previous section, Soldados de Salamina (2001), by Javier Cercas. Memory, so important in the novel, works, seen as a resource, and at the same time as a subjective element and as a favorable point of authenticity

(confidence in the discourse of the narrator for its value as an intimate confession).

Aramburu’s position with regard to the role of writers in societies has already been mentioned in this chapter. From the distance, in Germany, self-exiled like many other Basque and

Spanish people, Aramburu has fictionalized the terror and fear of decades of violence and has made “the Basque conflict” an important subject of his works. That is not to say that terrorism and

ETA are the only interests of Aramburu when constructing a novel or a collection of short stories.

His position is in line with other writers that can be classified as ‘social’ and ‘committed.’

In the “Ciclo Literatura y Compromiso Social,” a conference series by the Julián Besteiro

School, UGT, and the Autonomous University of Madrid in January-July 2000, several Spanish writers and intellectuals debated on the idea of commitment and literature in the 21st century. In his address, Francisco Umbral argued that any literary work is somehow committed and tied to its social context:

A uno este binomio literatura y compromiso siempre le ha parecido obsoleto, pues el solo

hecho de ponerse a escribir ya supone por parte de un profesional, la elección de una

actitud frente al mundo, ante sí mismo y ante el idioma. Escribir es confesarse ... La

escritura ideológica o literaria supone la más fuerte ligazón del escritor a una causa o un

estilo de visa, con una idea del mundo.

Many authors recognize that the social context of the 21st century is very different from the one the postwar writers encountered and wrote about. Therefore, a new social context will require a different form of commitment. In a sense, Almudena Grandes’ speech summarized many of several

165 ideas proposed by other writers and intellectuals. There is a new social context and as such there must be a renewed kind of commitment for this new and challenging context:

El mundo ha cambiado mucho desde que se acuñó el término “literatura

comprometida” hasta ahora ... Las condiciones sociales han cambiado, nuestra situación

es diferente, ya no se puede hacer literatura de combate ... Pero eso no quiere decir que ya

no se pueda escribir desde la propia conciencia, desde los términos de un compromiso

individual y universal a la vez, que vincula el destino de un escritor a la suerte de sus

semejantes, de sus hermanos, los habitantes del mundo que ha conocido.

Contemporary authors ask themselves just like the ones did in the 1950s, what the appropriate channel should be for this new commitment. As I have mentioned throughout this work, the overarching theme of this study is contemporary narrative and commitment to a particular aspect of Basque and Spanish context - terrorism, its manifestations and its consequences in the everyday life of ordinary people. As I examine Fernando Aramburu’s latest narrative proposal, I reiterate that Patria, by means of fiction conveys to the reader and the scholar the preoccupation, anxiety, and lunacy many experienced during the years when getting on a car without checking for bombs, was not an option.

4.3. Whose “patria”? Confronting a mutual past

Aramburu has dealt with Basque nationalism and ETA terrorism in numerous interviews with the Spanish press, in some cases with a considerable dose of irony and sarcasm. He did it when ETA had the capacity to kill and its crimes found significant social support, and long before the humor about nationalism reached the cinema (Ocho apellidos vascos, 2014, is, of course, the greatest example). Aramburu was not the first, but he was the most explicit author to use a formula

166 of black humor against ETA. In his first novel, Fuegos con limón (1997), Aramburu recreated the adventures of a group of aspiring surrealist artists who were very upset by the fact that, in the San

Sebastián of 1979, their writings and acts of provocation were not relevant because the violence of ETA (the band and their sympathizers) overwhelmed all media outlets. In one of the theater plays organized by the group, Hilario, the main character in the play, is a civil guard, whose

“misión consistía en apresar a un etarra cheposo, provisto de rabo y orejas de burro, a quien después de atentar contra la vida de un emperador romano de origen vasco le da por esconderse en un bidón de basura, basura auténtica” (Fuegos 102).

In another episode of the novel, Aramburu equated Basque nationalists to Nazis by resorting to a joke played by the members of the group on a prospective member of the terrorist band whose origin was non-Basque. They told him that all non-Basques were being captured, beaten and put into trucks to be taken to Anoeta soccer field, where “allí son fusilados desde las tribunas por miembros de ETA”. Meanwhile, the ‘Mesa Central de la República para el

Fortalecimiento de la Raza Vasca’ has seized power, and now “exhorta a los ciudadanos vascos a que no escatimen medios ni energía en la denuncia, captura y aniquilación de elementos incompatibles con nuestra idiosincrasia” (Fuegos 472). However, they tell him that they will take a risk for him and will hide him.

In 1990, seven years before Aramburu’s Fuegos con limón, Rául Guerra Garrido published

La carta, a novel in which a businessman receives a letter from ETA in which he is required to pay fifty million pesetas. Fear will lead to contradictory acts and disastrous results: hiding the threat to his family; contacting an intermediary, who recommends negotiating and paying (and wants to charge a commission for his job, of course); consulting the police, who tells him not to pay; and talking to a politician of the PNV, who recommends him to pay by using a special type

167 of loan. A family crisis takes place when he proposes to use his money, as well as his mother-in- law’s, to pay for the extortion.

Besides Guerra Garrido and Aramburu, humor and irony can be found in two novels of

Jorge M. Reverte’s popular Gálvez series, Gálvez en Euskadi (1982) and Gudari Gálvez (2005).

In their pages, there is blackmail and kidnapping of businessmen, lawyers who work for ETA, kale borroka, homage to terrorists, ETA’s communiqués and the terrorists’ proposals for a truce and the PNV-HB pact. In Gudari Gálvez, Sara explains to Gálvez that PNV politicians do not need a bodyguard: “Solo la oposición tiene que llevar escolta. El gobierno no la necesita. ETA es el único movimiento revolucionario en todo el mundo que no tiene el menor interés en derrocar al gobierno de su país” (159). Finally, in La patria de todos los vascos: una nouvelle (2008/Spanish version

2009), Iban Zaldua mocks the Basque nationalist discourse. The main character is a university professor who considers himself a victim of nationalism. Once ETA considers a ceasefire, the professor accepts an invitation to teach Basque language and culture at the University of

Anchorage, in “la cercana Alaska.” As he considers that “la historia de la literatura en vascuence es una de las más decepcionantes de todo el hemisferio occidental” (56), and because the history of the Basque Country is of no interest to American students, he basically makes up the contents of his lectures in order to keep his students interested in his classes of Basque history and literature.

Returning to Aramburu, it is worth noting how he has defended the victims of ETA, both in his literary work and in numerous newspaper articles and interviews. In the first chapter of this dissertation I referred to a public event at the Lagun bookstore in San Sebastián in 2016, where

Aramburu and Saizorbitoria discussed their two different views on literature (they write in Spanish

168 and Basque, respectively) and whether the role of the writer is to be ‘committed’ or not.36 Besides his public interventions, Aramburu has made use of his fictional creations to comment on the issue.

In Las letras entornadas (2015), a collection of essays, articles, prologues, disguised in narrative form, Aramburu talks about his life and his experiences with the nationalist world and terrorism, pausing to describe the attacks of the far right and ETA against Lagun bookstore in San Sebastián; the assassination attempt on the socialist member of the Basque government José Ramón Recalde, husband of María Teresa Castells, co-owner of the bookshop; and his decision, taken in 1984, to leave for Germany. He also tells that it was that year, on the occasion of the murder of Senator

Enrique Casas, when he made the conscious decision to oppose “desde la literatura y la opinión personal al terrorismo” (20) and “dar algún día testimonio escrito de cómo se vivió, se sintió y padeció individualmente el espantoso derrumbe moral de la sociedad en la que me crié”. (Las letras 52-53). Aramburu states his intention to write and denounce “contra los hombres que infieren sufrimiento a otros hombres y contra quienes aplauden las acciones criminales o las justifican las trivializan o les retan importancia” and in favor “todo lo bueno y noble que puede albergar el corazón humano” and of “la dignidad de las víctimas de ETA, de las víctimas consideradas en su humanidad concreta intransferible, en modo alguno tomadas como elementos anónimos de una estadística” (Las letras 53-56). To give a human dimension to his characters,

36 In his novel Martutene (2012), Ramón Saizarbitoria deals with the subject of victims in literary works through a conversation between the characters of Martín and Zabaleta, who debate precisely “sobre el compromiso en la literatura”. Zabaleta has attended a conference about commitment in literature, organized by an association of victims, “en la que la mayoría de los asistentes estaba de acuerdo en que a los escritores de lengua vasca les había inspirado más el victimario que la víctima, de cuyo dolor no se había hecho eco” (382). In the conference, someone pointed out that “incluso los escritores que han hecho pública condena del terrorismo no han mostrado la mínima empatía que cabría esperar de ellos en su obra y no han contribuido a la desmitologización de ETA” (382). Zabaleta considers it an unjust generalization and believes that to say “las víctimas siempre tienen razón traerá problemas” because “las auténticas víctimas son los muertos”. He also considers that “habría que distinguir entre víctimas propiciatorias y accidentales y entre víctimas y héroes” (382).

169 Aramburu declares that he always tries to place them “en los escenarios donde transcurre la vida cotidiana de cualquier ciudadano” and “no incurrir en la retórica del patetismo ni en la tentación de teorizar de interrumpir el hilo de los relatos con el fin de tomar de forma explícita postura política” (Las letras 55). He reserves the latter tasks for his interviews with the press. Aramburu’s collection of stories Los peces de la amargura (2006) was the result of his intention to offer a representative panorama of a Basque society forced to coexist with terror. Aramburu does not focus on historical facts or statistics, but instead he writes about a frightened community drowning in sorrow. All the short stories compiled in Los peces de la amargura are populated by victims from both sides of the troubles. “Maritxu” focuses on the mother of an imprisoned terrorist and her life between visits. Aramburu captures the changes taking place in Basque society as associations in support of victims of terrorism become more prominent and organized. For

Maritxu, the members of the associations are “menuda pandilla de sinvergüenzas” (Los peces 71).

When a family is attacked with a Molotov cocktail in “La colcha quemada” because of their involvement in politics, their neighbors hope they leave the place because they do not want to be involved. They urge that “se vaya buscando otro domicilio. Que se instale en el pueblo de al lado o en Bilbao hasta que se arregle la cosa. Tiene que comprender que nos crea situaciones muy difíciles” (Los peces 100). For them it is not personal as they feel pity for their predicament as a woman confesses, “A mí sobre todo me da pena la vecina” (Los peces 101).

In the case of Aramburu’s Patria, analepsis and prolepsis are two mechanisms extensively used in the construction of the story, as well as the repetition of events through time. The use of memory often implies that mental flashbacks involve present the details and spaces that are most significant for the characters. The space is treated from a very subjective view, one that, sometimes, serves to connect the feelings or memories of the characters (sensitive memory) while

170 the use of urban spaces predominates. Aramburu’s novel has the tendency to minimize the intervention of the narrator (the use of connecting verbs such as “dice”, “piensa” and its variations:

“murmura”, “reflexiona sobre” “interrogó”, “contestó” and locative / temporal verbs such as “se mira”, “se piensa”, “está de pie”, “se marchó”, etc.) in favor of dialogue (or, in some cases, interior monologue) of the characters, which has a key importance in the novel. Patria evidences a behavioral composition, based on the external, dialogue and behavior of the characters, with slight internal nuances.

The characters in Patria are presented with their first names or nicknames as none of them are given a surname, a resource used to extend the scope of the narrated so that all people and families can identify themselves with the events narrated. Moreover, the unnamed Guipuzkoan town where the primary action takes place could be any Basque town. The couples that form of the two central families (Bittori and Txato, on the one hand; Miren and Joxian, on the other) have been friends for a long time and they have shared many experiences in the process of raising their children. Initially united by a close friendship, their bonds will crumble due to political reasons, and a growing hostility among nationalist and non-nationalist factions fueled by the prevailing social climate. Txato, a successful business owner is seen as “explotador de la clase trabajadora”, and is subjected to pressure and intimidation by members of LAB trade union37. When Herri

Batasuna’s member Josu Muguruza was murdered probably by members of GAL, nationalist trade unions and parties called for major marchs and protests in the Basque Country (“Huelga general

... En los pueblos no hay escapatoria. Parón completo (tiendas, bares, talleres) o atente a las consecuencias ... Hoy no se trabaja”, Patria 214). Txato is first extorted and then murdered by an

37 LAB (Langile Abertzaleen Batzordeak) is a left-wing Basque nationalist trade union founded in 1974.

171 ETA commando, the same one where Joxe Mari, one of Joxian and Miren’s children is integrated.

Part of the narrative thread is the building of tension due to the possibility that Joxian’s son, Joxe

Mari, might be Txato’s executor.

Joxe Mari earns his stripes by taking part in the kale borroka (“uno más de los encapuchados, la boca tapada con un pañuelo”, 41), setting buses on fire (“trabajo hecho. Ahora a potear”, 169) and participating in bank heists. He is introduced in the use of weapons while in the south of France, and he eventually commits his first assassination when he kills a bar owner. Joxe

Mari recalls the event and remembers what he felt (“A mí me mandan que ejecute a fulano y lo ejecuto sea quien sea”, 279). Joxe Mari is finally apprehended, tortured, and imprisoned far from

Euskal Herria following the policy of the “dispersión” of ETA members. The novel provides multiples clues of the fear impregnating the daily life of a society threatened from within (graffitis on the walls of churches, schools, town halls; demonstrations, etc.) in which rumors and accusations are part of daily life. It will be useful to refer to the term Panopticon, as developed by

Jeremy Bentham and analyzed by Michel Foucault and already discussed when examing El ángulo ciego in chapter 2, to explain the atmosphere of fear that permeates all aspects of community life.

ETA’s minions and vigilantes assert public control and constantly survey what happens in the streets, neighborhoods and apartments. Grafitti reminds the community that ETA acts and has eyes everywhere. Thus, there is a tyranny of terror imposed by the thugs. Txato is targeted by ETA and as such he loses the support of neighbours, his workers and everyone in the community as they know that support for the businessman could mean they become targets as well.

Aramburu addressed the issue of ETA and violence during the democratic period in several works. In the aforementioned Fuegos con limón (1996); in some of the stories of No ser no duele

(1997), where with humor he summarizes, in less than a page, the life of a terrorist organization;

172 and in the already mentioned Los peces de la amargura and Las letras entornadas. In his last two novels, however, there is a significant change, perhaps because the author has been affected by the criticism of Basques nationalists. Their pages are now populated by torturers who are not ETA members. In Años lentos (2012), Aramburu goes back in time, during the period of Franco’s dictatorship. On this occasion, the protagonists are a young terrorist and his family, whom the writer presents as victims of the terrorist phenomenon, and the argument revolves around the formation of a terrorist, under the permissive influence of a nationalist priest and social networks like “la cuadrilla”, “el club de montaña”, and “la sociedad gastronómica”. The approach in Años is different from his previous works, since the terrorist is not a sanguinary individual. On the other hand, there is the notorious presence of Spanish policemen, among them Melitón Manzanas

(symbol of police brutality and Francoist repression), many of them torturers. Años continually mentions and describes the torture sessions taking place in the barracks and police stations. This method is partially repeated in Patria.

As it often happens in Aramburu’s works, the violence takes place in the Basque Country.

Aramburu declares that with Patria he wanted to “trazar un dibujo general de la sociedad vasca con participación de todos los actores implicados: victimarios, víctimas y demás vecinos”

(Seisdedos, “La derrota”). He uses his memories to refute the myths of Basque nationalism and considers that the writer has a role to play in defeating terrorism and its legacy. In the words of

Aramburu, “La derrota literaria está pendiente. De qué sirve hablar de la derrota de ETA si luego predomina un relato que glorifica a la organización. Cuantos más testimonios seamos capaces de aportar, más difícil les será imponer la mentira, el mito, la leyenda” (Seisdedos, “La derrota”).

The main victim in the novel is Txato, although he is not the only one, given that the novel implies that there are other victims besides the dead ones. This proposition underlines that the suffering of

173 Basque society has been caused not only by ETA and radical nationalism, but also by others including officials of the Spanish State.

The protagonists are Txato and his wife Bittori, with their children, and their close friends and neighbors, Miren and Joxian. These last two end their relationship when Txato is labelled an enemy of the Basque people after being threatened and extorted by ETA, unable and unwilling, to meet their demands. The novel depicts the campaign of harassment, the process of isolation, and vulnerability that Txato and his family suffer. Furthermore, the readers learn about the process of radicalization of Joxe Mari, the son of Miren and Joxian, who eventually joins the ranks of ETA and becomes part of the cell that kills Txato. Just like in Años lentos, Aramburu depicts the figure of a young indoctrinated terrorist with a certain degree of human compassion. Aramburu maintains that with Patria he chose to portray both sides of the conflict rather than focusing on the victims alone or their assailants. Instead he captures and recreates his version of a microcosm in the Basque

Country. In the words of Aramburu, “He tenido la ambición de crear mediante la literatura un dibujo general, no focalizado en víctimas solamente, en agresores solamente o en aspectos parciales de la realidad que tuvimos” (Hernández, “El perdón”). Aramburu emphasizes that although a terrorist may be a victim of indoctrination, he does not equal his plight to the one of the victim of terrorism. He stresses that “un asesino no me inspira la misma compasión que las víctimas del terrorismo” (Hernández, “El perdón”). Aramburu has also stated that in order to construct this story he has used a “photographic camera” and the photo shows what takes place in the prisons. He confirms that “He aplicado la cámara fotográfica y en la foto han salido las torturas en comisarías y cuartelillos, la vida carcelaria o las penalidades que pasan los padres de los presos de ETA cuando tienen que viajar lejos y se exponen a sufrir accidentes de tráfico. Lo que no hago es equiparar ambos dolores” (Seisdedos, “La derrota”).

174 Aramburu’s instant camera captures the case of Mikel Zabala, dead after being tortured in the notorious Intxaurrondo barracks. The same camera brings to life guardias civiles who act outside the law, torturing or threatening terrorists or fondling and abusing females - Nerea and

Arantxa during a road stop - characteristic of what happened for decades in the Basque Country.

Joxe Mari is subject to torture in the prison cells (waterboarding, electric shock, solitary confinement): “Desnudo con el pasamontañas, tirado en el suelo áspero, le aplicaban los electrodos en las piernas, en los testículos, detrás de las orejas. Se contrae, bota grita” (Patria 509). Aramburu mentions the assassination of Miguel Ángel Blanco but without dwelling on the incident. Neither he mentions other instances of individuals threatened, extorted or assassinated by the band. Instead the author spends time and many written pages stirring certain degree of pity for the murderer and his family particularly his mother, Miren, as he describes prison life, and Miren’s journey by bus to the jail far from their home. Initially Joxe Mari remains defiant while in prison. After 17 years imprisoned, at the age of 43, he reflects on his violent past recalling how Txato would buy him ice creams in the summertime. Joxe Mari renounces ETA and the distorted vision of the Basque

Country that drove him to join the fight against the others. As happened to Txato, the victims had no name for the terrorists, for whom they were only stereotyped images devoid of humanity

(txakurras, beltza, txibato, etc.).

Patria is the story of a community torn apart by demagogy, fear, and a false and flawed sense of history. The need to come to terms with what happened between neighbors, workers, and friends, is the need of a whole society to atone for the violence of the past before moving on to pick up the pieces. People need to forgive and to atone their guilt. Aramburu’s latest novel contain some important historical facts that help shape the temporal limits of the narrative: the murder of the politician of Herri Batasuna Josu Muguruza by members of the Spanish extreme right in 1989

175 (chapter 45);the appearance of the body of Mikel Zabalza in a river after the tortures suffered in the barracks of Intxaurrondo police station in 1985 (chapter 50); the death of ETA board member

Txomin Iturbe in a car accident in Algeria - although some suspect that it was at the hands of the

GAL- (chapter 53); the leadership of ETA by the historical Santi Potros and by Pakito between

1987 and 1992 (with whom Joxe Mari talks in chapters 57, 78 and 79); the murder of ETA member

Yoyes by the terrorist group when she wants to stop killing in 1986 (chapter 79); the bomb attack that kills the PP councilor in Rentería Manolo Zamarreño in 1998 (chapter 88); and finally the capture of the ETA leadership in the French city of Bidart in 1992 (Chapter 100).

When Joxe Mari meets the historical leader Pakito, he feels the “chill” in the air due to his history of cold-blooded murders. Pakito looks like a mundane individual yet with enough sang froid to make Joxe Mari feel that “una ráfaga de frío que le hizo pensar: hostia, me tenía que haber puesto el jersey. Y era igual que cuando vas al supermercado, te metes en la sección de congelados y te sorprende un repentino bajón de la temperatura” (Patria 383). At the same time Joxe Mari appears to be fascinated by Pakito’s reputation in the band: “De él se decía que había matado a

Moreno Berbareche, Pertur, y ordenado ejecutar a Yoyes, como él de Ordizia, y reventar la casa cuartel de Zaragoza con niños dentro” (Patria 383). When Pakito welcomes Joxe Mari with “una palmada en la espalda”, this gesture becomes a symbolic blessing as Joxe Mari is finally part of the big league: “Era la bendición, el ingreso definitivo en ETA” (Patria 384).

Whether the reader has a profound knowledge of the history of ETA, or simply has heard about the tragic attacks, the icy atmosphere described in this episode creates the conditions for the reader’s emotions to arise. For the terrorists discussing the next target is like writing the agenda of a meeting or a shopping list. Pakito is described as somebody “muy astuto ... Hombre minucioso, calculador” (Patria 384) while giving instructions to the new recruits: “Esta es vuestra zona. Aquí

176 lo que queráis. Policías, guardias civiles, ertzainas, lo que se ponga por delante. Hay que golpear con fuerza hasta que el Estado se siente a negociar” (Patria 384). Human beings have no value, but rather they are spendable pawns to play with in a bloody game of chess.

As noted earlier in this chapter, Patria does not focus on the plight of a victim, or the dilemma of an idealist terrorist. Instead, Aramburu has concocted a universe populated by a series of diverse characters stemming from different ideological and social spectra. It seems that all sectors of Basque society have found their niche. On the one hand, we identity the victims of terrorism (Txato and his family: Bittori, Nerea and Xabier); on the other, the terrorist/imprisoned member of ETA Joxe Mari and his family (Miren, Joxian, Gorka and Arantxa). Besides the two families, Patxi seems to be the leader within the abertzale spheres of influence from the symbolic space of the Arrano Taberna, where the photo of Joxe Mari is displayed to be “worshiped”. Patxi threatens Joxe Mari’s brother, Gorka (“Que sea la última vez que hablas para un periódico y que aceptas dinero de una entidad bancaria explotadora de los trabajadores”, 350) while showing

Gorka the money box on the counter to collect money for ETA’s imprisoned members. In the same way, the readers are also reminded of the role that many nationalist workers trade unions had in threatening many business owners as exemplified in the figure of Andoni.

Aramburu does not stop there, and creates the figure of Don Serapio, the local priest and supporter of the nationalist agenda of Joxe Mari and ETA, a clear allusion to San Sebastián’s

Bishop Setién, who refused permission to have the funeral of socialist Enrique Casas in San

Sebastián cathedral. In a 2016 interview with Iker Seisdedos, Aramburu refers to the funeral of

ETA’s Txomin Iturbe with the presence of five priests (“La derrota”). In the same interview

Aramburu explains how the assassination of Casas was the catalyst that made him reconsider violence in the Basque Counry. Aramburu confesses that “la presencia física de la muerte supuso

177 una conmoción. No podía creer que todo ese dolor fuese sólo con el fin de sacar réditos políticos”

(“La derrota”). Patria depicts multiple secondary characters that endure fear, silence and distrust as part of their everyday life, with several examples of witnesses of violence who remain silent for fear of reprisals (as is the case of Joxian as well as Txato’s neighbors and employees). In sum,

Aramburu’s eagerness to encompass diverse aspects of life in the Basque Country provides a valid vehicle to portray the Basque conflict as a disease of collective proportions. A contagion that spreads in a tribal society by means of silence, fear and indifference. Edurne Portela has recently referred to this silence in the following terms:

En cuanto al silencio, lo considero el mejor aliado de la indiferencia porque a través del

silencio nos escudamos ante aquello que no queremos ver, oír, aquello de lo que no

queremos hablar. La indiferencia, el dar la espalada a la realidad y al dolor de los demás,

se nutre de ese silencio ... Si el testigo de la injusticia calla, en realidad se está

posicionando con su silencio del lado del perpetrador, aunque no lo quiera. La sociedad

vasca, salvo excepciones (los integrantes de Gesto por la Paz, por ejemplo) ha sido

silenciosa. (Gascon, “La sociedad”)

Indeed, as Portela affirms, everyone contributes, to a certain extent, to the creation of a spiral of silence (see my review of Noelle-Newman’s theory in the first chapter of this dissertation) which makes responsible not only the ones who bear the arms but also those who silently witness the plight of the victims who are subjected to threats and extortion. For the terrorists, their ideological position is more important that the feelings or the safety of others, who in order to maintain certain personal safety, accept the implicit threats and violence to avoid reprisals. In this context, the

178 culture of fear, negation, or justification prevails and this type of behavior becomes normalized, as seen in Joxian, Txato’s best friend. When Txato confides in him and explains his predicament,

Joxian refuses to believe him: “Estas cosas, entre vascos, no deberían pasar .... Yo no entiendo de estas cosas, pero para mí que ha habido una equivocación” (Patria 60-61). Joxian is oblivious to what is happening in his own home and when Txato tells his friend he would like Joxe Mari to act as an intermediary with members of the band, he becomes surprised and interjects, “¿Qué tiene que ver mi hijo en todo esto?... Joxe Mari no es de ETA, ¿eh? ¡Qué va a ser!” (Patria 62).

When Txato becomes the target of intimidation and persecution in his small industrial town, and Miren turns into a kind of mother courage who defends her thuggish son and his distorted ideals, his “good friend” Joxian shuns him, surrendering to his wife and to abertzale pressure. It could be argued that Joxian is ‘castrated’ not once or twice but three times. In the private sphere, he is a henpecked husband bullied by his wife Miren. In the same way, his old ideas of what being Basque means have been rejected by his son, Joxe Mari, who disowns the ways of his elders and becomes engulfed in a violent frenzy. Thirdly, Joxian’s voice in the public sphere

(taberna, cyclist club, and other places where he goes) has been crushed. The only place he finds solace and comfort is in his vegetable garden, reminder of his friendship with Txato, who provided him with arable soil from Navarra “por lo visto buena para las cepas” (Patria 59). Everyone in town knew that Txato was a man of action: “Para emprendedor y valiente, el Txato. En el pueblo lo decían los vecinos hasta que de la noche a la mañana, TXATO ENTZUN PIM PAM PUM, dejaron de mencionarlo en sus conversaciones, como si nunca hubiera existido” (Patria 59).

As mentioned earlier, social theorist Elizabeth Noelle-Neuman has formulated “The Spiral of Silence Theory” to explain individual behavior in society, providing us with a number of hypothesis that can be applied to the fears and silence of Basque society in the context of Basque

179 terrorism. Noelle-Neuman considers that most people are afraid of social isolation. Indeed, human beings are social creatures who seek reinforcement and approval within their public sphere and do not like to be singled out of the pack. Joxian feels remorse for his behavior but he does not want to enrage those who “rule” the town. He seeks Txato one night to try to justify his conduct. He shivers at the thought that someone might see him. In the words of the narrator, “A Joxian le temblaban las manos, le temblaba la voz y no paraba de tender la mirada a los lados de la calle, como con miedo de que lo vieran mantener conversación con el Txato” (Patria 225). Txato apologizes to Joxian who rejects his former friend’s excuses:

-Nada. Decirte que lo siento, que no te puedo saludar porque me traería problemas. Pero

si te veo en la calle que sepas que te estoy saludando con el pensamiento.

-¿Alguna vez te han dicho que eres un cobarde?

-Me lo digo yo todo el tiempo. Pero eso no cambia nada. ¿Te puedo dar un abrazo? Aquí

no nos ve nadie.

-Déjalo para cuando te atrevas a hacerlo a la luz del día.

-Si te podria ayudar, te juro...

- No te preocupes. Me bastan tus saludos mentales. (Patria 335-336)

Joxian appears genuinely concerned about Txato and wishes he could show him affection and support, yet he hides his concerns because doing so would expose him to “isolation pressure”. As

Noelle-Neuman observes, “people tend to hide their opinion away when they think that they would expose themselves to “isolation pressure” with their opinion. In contrast those who feel public support, tend to express their opinion loud and clear”. In the case of Basque terrorism, it was more

180 than mere opinions, it was actions, fatal actions. If the attacks were not condemned by an ample sector of the population, then the terrorists became more daring, louder and more sanguine. It developed into an endless spiral of violence that blinded many with strong signifiers reminding the public that ETA had eyes everywhere and if one did not do pay the revolutionary tax, or spoke up against their agenda, they would make sure someone would face the consequences. The

Panopticon becomes particularly visible in Patria the moment Txato begins to receive threatening letters, the reason why he decides to send his daughter Nerea to study in Zaragoza, away from the conflict. In one of the last conversations he had with Joxian referring to the letters he received requesting he pay the so-called ‘revolutionary tax’, Txato emphasizes that it is not no longer about his safety, but his family has been threatened (“En la carta me mencionan a Nerea y el sitio donde estudia y otros detalles”, 61).

In addition to letters, graffiti constitute a means of communication between ETA and

Basque society. Graffiti reminds people who the enemy is supposed to be: “Txato entzun pim pam pum” (35); “Una de tantas: Txato Txibato ... el caso es difamar y meter miedo. Fulano hace un poco, mengano hace otro poco” (82); “Txato faxista, opresor, ETA mátalo” (212). Txato and his family are no longer part of the community. Other slogans like “ETA herria zurekin” [ETA, the people are with you], “Batu eta borroka Euskal Herri askea! [Join and fight, freedom for Euskal

Herria], and “ETA bientan jarrai” [ETA, the two fights continue]. These terrorist slogans, together with the symbols of the serpent and the axe, are constant reminders of ETA’s presence in schools, squares and many other public spaces subject to surveillance and the gaze of the observer (multiple observers, in this case). We can think again of the Panopticon, the type of penitentiary building that Jeremy Bentham designed in the late 18th century, and a concept that Foucault egregiously adopted in his Discipline and Punish (1975) to define control in modern societies. In the case of

181 ETA, the observer is not an individual but the beehive, the communal army of ETA and its accomplices. In the Basque Country, the symbols, the ceremonies, the rallies, the funerals of dead etarras are mechanisms of control that exert the same intimidation as physical buildings and institutions. ETA appropriates the privilege to decide who lives and who dies, who is persona non- grata and who deserves to be considered martyr of the cause. It is because of this that Txato and his family become pariahs who are subjected to isolation and contempt. As Bittori puts it after the killing of her husband, in his final days Txato “se quedó más solo que la una. ¿Los amigos? No los buscaba, no lo buscaban. Lo aislaron al mismo tiempo que él se aisló. Ni iba a jugar a las cartas al Pageota ni a cenar los sábados en la sociedad gastronómica” (Patria 211). In other words, Txato was the ‘untouchable’ and the enemy.

The members of Txato’s family also face the exclusion of their neighbors, who refuse to greet them. Bittori recalls how one of her neighbors, avoiding crossing paths with her, preferred to wait in the rain “para no coincidir en el portal” (Patria 19). Similarly, her son Xabier has to endure insults and threats while picking up furniture and other personal effects to leave town after the murder of his father, even though he does it during the night to avoid been seen by too many people (Patria 31). Former friends from school and the cuadrilla threaten him (“Uno, mordiendo con rabia las palabras, dijo en voz alta que se había aprendido de memoria el número de la matrícula”, Patria 31). In this context, even Gorka, Joxe Mari’s brother, feels the pressure to act as if he were an ETA supporter because of the gaze he is constantly subjected to. In a conversation with his sister Arantxa, he recalls the time he used to live in town: “Mientras vivió en el pueblo le resultaba muy difícil mantenerse al margen del ambiente abertzale. En un pueblo pequeño no puedes escurrir el bulto. Cuando había manifestación, homenajes, altercados, y alguna historia de

182 esas había cada dos por tres, no es que pasaran lista; pero siempre había ojos dedicados a controlar quién estaba y quién no” (Patria 251).

While Txato and his family are subjected to intimidation and social stigma, terrorist Joxe

Mari is considered a martyr, a freedom fighter (in Basque, gudari), and his family is well respected.

Gorka, his younger brother, does not share Joxe Mari’s violent tendencies, but in order not to arise suspicions he frequents the abertzale meeting places like the taberna, and there he notices that being Joxe Mari’s brother affords him certain social status: “Ser hermano de Joxe Mari me daba prestigio. Tener un hermano en ETA, ¡menuda categoría! Les podía parecer un tipo raro, introvertido, poco sociable, pero nadie recelaba de mis ideas políticas” (Patria 251). The two families, in consequence, embody an allegory of Basque society.

Txatos’s children (Xabier and Nerea) struggle to come to terms with the traumatic event of their father’s death. Xabier has rejected being happy and even his sister refers to him as “el doctor triste” (Patria 396). He has not forgiven himself for not doing enough. Nerea, on the other hand was part of the young people shouting ETA’s slogans during homages or demonstrations, mixing with the nationalist crowds until her father sends her to study in Zaragoza. When her father is assassinated, Nerea’s first reaction is to ignore her family as she does not want to be recognized publicly as the daughter of a victim or a victim herself. On the other side, Joxe Mari’s brother and sister suffered different fates although both of them carry symbolic roles in the novel. Arantxa suffers a stroke that leaves her paralyzed and unable to speak. While her body is crippled by the illness, her mind remains lucid and she eventually learns to communicate with her family with the help of an electronic device. Arantxa is a silent victim of fate. Fate has chosen her to be the bearer of pain but also the bearer of healing as she seeks to reconcile both families. Arantxa in many respects overcomes social pressure confronting her mother Miren and her brother Joxe Mari to

183 engage in a labor of peace and reconciliation with Bittori, Txato’s widow. Gorka, the youngest of all, left town to get away from social pressure, and he now puts to use his knowledge of the Basque language to promote it and fight negative images of independence and violence. At the end of

Patria, he even receives a literary award for his poems. Gorka, just like Aramburu is ‘saved’ by literature and his decision to leave home to escape the toxic nationalist environment. The fact that he publishes in the Basque language may suggest Aramburu’s nod and recognition that authors who write in Basque have indeed addressed and denounced terrorism. In the past Aramburu’s has expressed his view that those who write in Basque are defined by a system that promotes and awards the spread of the language for political gain. In 2011 when Aramburu received the Tusquets award for Años lentos, he argued that “No son libres porque están subvencionados, forman parte de la campaña de promoción del idioma. En el País Vasco se mantiene la ficción de que existen lectores en euskera y por tanto es necesario el apoyo oficial” (Prados, “Los escritores”).

4.4. Literary symbolism in Patria.

In Patria, there are a number of symbolic spaces that I have alluded to in my study of works by Etxenike and Atxaga in Chapters 2 and 3 of this dissertation. To begin with the town itself, it is an unnamed Gipuzkoan town near Hernani, a well-known bastion of radical nationalism. The church, the taberna, the workshops, the gastronomic societies, the coffee shops where friends exchange gossip… all these spaces represent important aspects of a small/medium sized industrial town in contemporary Basque Country. These spaces struggle to maintain a connection with their ancestral rural bonds (the language, the land) and the reality of an industrial era coming to an end.

In a town like the one depicted in Patria there is a strong endogamous disposition, and resistance to outsiders. Aramburu, in creating an unnamed Basque industrial town, has intended to portray

“un pueblo vasco arquetípico, más que uno determinado”. Moreover, aware of the fact that some

184 of the places mentioned in the novel bear no resemblance with certain spaces in Hernani, he explains that “los bares mencionados o el interior de la iglesia ... no corresponden en absoluto con los de la localidad que a más de uno le vendrá tal vez al pensamiento al leer la novela” (“Patria en el taller” 183). It could be argued that the existence of an archetypical town suggest that what ensues in this unnamed town may also materialize in the entire Basque society - the possibility of reconciliation and forgiveness.

In addition to the importance of public spaces in the configuration of Basque identities and its implications, Patria exposes the generational fracture of Basque society. As it has already been mentioned, Joxe Mari rejects what he sees as his father’s ‘apathy.’ Family life lacks communication, and both Txato and his friend Joxian spend their time in the taverns, playing cards, practicing cycling on Sundays or in the gastronomic societies. Public spaces are dominated by men while woman seem to dominate the family realm, alluding to the so-called Basque matriarchy.

Joxian is described as “pintaba poco. Bueno, no pintaba nada ... quieto, soso, callado, sin arranque”

(Patria 433).

Another powerful symbol is the cemetery, a place of reflection for the widow Bittori. Txato was not buried at home, but instead his body lays in the confines of the big cemetery of Polloe, in

San Sebastián, away from his hometown in what is the family’s attempt to protect his identity in order to avoid possible desecrations. And while he was always known as Txato in life, in death he remains unnamed as his tombstone only shows his given name and surname, not his nickname. He has therefore died twice, for it is by losing his beloved nickname that he has lost his identity too.

This is another sign of how terrorists appropriate places, names, languages, and patrias: Even for the dead, peace seems unattainable. It is in this cemetery where Bittori confides in Txato that peace is finally near (“Lo otro que quería decirte es que la banda ha decidido dejar de matar”, Patria 24).

185 For Bittori, however, the announcement it is not enough, as she needs to know who was responsible: “Tengo una gran necesidad de saber. La he tenido siempre. Y no me van a parar ...

No me interrumpas... Pues mira, Txato y la respuesta, si la hay, sólo puede estar en el pueblo y por eso voy a ir allí, hoy mismo por la tarde” (Patria 24).

It is precisely the public announcement of the 2011 ceasefire what opens Patria. The reader immediately knows that Txato is dead and that he was a victim of ETA’s violence. What takes place in the 105 brief chapters of the novel is the account of what happened years before the event took place. Patria depicts small details of life that often remain untold because what people notice is the headlines (kale borroka, bombs, shootings, tortures, etc.) instead of the individual experiences narrated in 646 pages of the novel: minutiae, rites of passage, love affairs, an abortion in London, and many other moments in the life of what can be seen as archetypical characters.

Another important symbolic element of Aramburu’s novel is the rain. The presence of rain begins indeed with the cover of the novel - we can see a dark figure holding a red umbrella. The night that Txato is assassinated it is dark and rains heavily, and the symbolic condition of the rain in his death is confirmed by the fact that it is not the first time that Aramburu uses this phenomenon to build a certain emotional atmosphere. In Los peces de la amargura, for example, the first story has a gray and rainy background (“El día no podía ser más desapacible. Uno de esos días grises de lluvia, de viento racheado que lo mismo sopla de aquí a allí” (Los peces 13). The rain acts as a unifying element of the stories of the book, while invoking a cyclical characteristic of climate in the geographical space of the Basque Country. Throughout Patria, Aramburu uses the rain as a literary device to link weather with the emotions of the characters shaping the dramatic atmosphere in which Txato is killed and acting as foreshadow of his misfortune: Chapter 46, “Un día de lluvia”, narrates the last hours of Txato on a rainy day (“El día que asesinaron a Txato llovía”, Patria 221);

186 Chapter 48, “Turno de tarde”, narrates the same fatal day but from Joxian’s perspective (“Todo el santo día lloviendo y le tocaba trabajar de tarde”, Patria 230); the rain also appears as a motif of destruction in chapter 11, “Inundación”, that recounts how “Tres días de lluvias biblícas, torrenciales o como se diga” (Patria 54) led to the destruction of Joxian’s vegetable garden, inundated by the power of nature.

Another function of rain, in addition to anticipating death, is to be a catalyst for memory insofar as its presence creates an atmosphere favorable to memory and nostalgia. It is raining when

Xabier and Nerea argue in a cafe (Patria 133), and it is also raining when Bittori goes to the cemetery to tell Txato that she has received the letter from Joxe Mari asking for forgiveness (Patria

629). Right after Txato’s death, the narrator gives us access to the mind of his daughter Nerea, who is still in Zaragoza: “Y detestó la mañana y la lluvia y la casa de enfrente...todas las cosas parecían decirle: pues sí, han matado a tu padre, ¿y qué?” (Patria 146). In short, the rain works as a layer of weariness and despair that befalls on Nerea reinforcing a sentimental climax after the attack.

The second essential symbol in the novel is the mental breakdown in connection to the irreparable effects of terrorism. Aramburu establishes a relationship between both concepts that is repeated in the novel. Indeed, as the novel progresses, it develops the idea that terrorism produces a type of breakdown and anguish over the lives of all human beings, an irreversible action that destroys the identity of both victim and perpetrator. Beyond the physical and emotional damages caused by the terrorist act, the victim must also confront social exclusion and dehumanization by not being considered a useful citizen for the configuration of the Basque Country and, therefore, they suffer social rejection, contempt, lack of empathy or the justification of terrorism for their political position or ideology. The foundations of this relationship between fragmentation and

187 terrorism are evident right from the first page of Patria, since the novel begins with the voice of

Bittori saying: “Ahí va la pobre, a romperse en él. Lo mismo que se rompe una ola en las rocas.

Un poco de espuma y adiós” (Patria 13), while referring to her daughter Nerea, who is going to meet her husband Quique walking in high heel shoes. Bittori refers to the unstable situation of

Nerea, a woman psychologically damaged by the killing of her father and whose problems are magnified by the troubles in her marriage. In her particular case, the effects of terrorism are manifested in an internal struggle with Freudian impulses represented by Thanatos and Eros, as she constantly avoids facing what she describes as “la imagen física de la muerte, el cuerpo inerte”

(Patria 406). Nerea embarks into a series of amorous adventures to calm her desperation, as the narrator explains: “Le entró una especie de apremio sexual que antes de morir su padre no había experimentado, al menos con la misma intensidad ... Se relajaba practicando el sexo, eso es todo.

Y también se le levantaba la autoestima. Había días en que la tenía por los suelos” (Patria 316).

Paralyzed by fear of facing the corporeal presence of death, Nerea chooses to focus on what she considers the opposites of physical death, sex as a way to escape her fears.

Just like his sister, Xabier is a broken soul. Chapter 76, “Tú llora tranquilo” recounts when

Xabier learned his father’s fate. Bittori tells him, “Tú llora tranquilo si eso te ayuda” but, unlike his mother, Xabier “no se contenía, inclinado sobre su madre, abarcándola en conmovido abrazo.

Roto de pena” (Patria 369). Xabier cannot allow himself to be happy and he thinks he does not deserve happiness. His wife Aranzazu wanted to make him happy (“Yo te haré feliz, maitia, te lo juro”, Patria 375) but Xabier disagrees (“Pero es que yo no debo ser feliz”, Patria 375). He eventually breaks up with Aranzazu and she is convinced that his father’s death has affected their relationship and their marriage (“El que mató a tu padre rompió lo que nos unía a ti y a mí”, Patria

375). Unlike Nerea, Xabier chooses the impulses of Thanatos letting it overcome his life and

188 rejecting that love will bring him hope and compensate the loss of his father. There is a reference to broken love (“Aquel amor tan frágil, tan de vidrio y porcelana, que tú hiciste añicos”, 375) that is actually foreshadowed when Aranzazu describes a recurrent dream of hers, one in which she carries a porcelain vase or a bottle that falls and breaks into pieces (Patria 363). All this characterizes Xabier as a sad individual carrying with him a heavy burden. His sister Nerea describes him as “es el hombre más triste que conozco” (131).

Just like her children, the widow Bittori has not overcome the sadness, and emptiness of losing her “Txatito”. After being diagnosed with cancer, and realizing that her days are numbered, she seeks to finish her life with peace of mind. The disease is consuming her body but it has given her the will to return and claim her rightful place in her patria. Bittori’s embarks on a journey, the return to her ‘homeland,’ the place from where she was chased out by her neighbors and former friends with insults, threats and indifference. From this perspective, Bittori may be considered the female agency of the myth of the hero subverting patriarchal traditions. Invoking Campbell’s concept of monomyth, already discussed in the previous chapter of this dissertation, I argue that the monomyth manifests in Bittori, a figure who has been inside the ‘belly of the whale’ in her descent into hell. During this time, her protector has been the spirit of Txato with whom she converses in the cemetery. A catalyst event, the ETA ceasefire, transforms her after she hears the news that “que ya no van a matar más” (Patria 19), and she finally reemerges with great resolve to conclude her mission. Her decision will affect the lives of many bringing reconciliation and a possibility of peaceful coexistence and forgiveness. Bittori is not going to hide any longer. She wants to make her presence known, and she defiantly murmurs that she is going to put a red geranium in the balcony to let her neighbors know that she is back, “uno bien grande y rojo para que sepan que he vuelto” (Patria 71).

189 As for the terrorist Joxe Mari and his family, their lives have also been severely affected by terrorism. The family is shattered with Joxe Mari away in prison, and his sister Arantxa’s body confined in a crippling illness. Joxian, the father, feels guilty for having abandoned Txato and for having failed at being a good father. Only the youngest son, Gorka, has achieved a certain degree of normalcy writing in Basque, promoting the language, and learning to come to terms with what his brother and his community did. Miren, the mother, has remained a strong and defiant mother supporting Joxe Mari, travelling by bus to Andalucia to visit him. Moreover, she looks after

Arantxa now disabled. It will be Arantxa who becomes the messenger and mediator of a reconciliation between the two families. With the help of her caregiver, she is able to attain some independence from her mother and meets Bittori. The initial furtive meetings in the church, and exchange of smiles in the street will result in Joxe Mari writing a letter to Bittori, expressing regrets for what had happened and confirming he did not shoot Txato. It is at this point that Bittori achieves what she wished for - knowledge. As she had previously confessed to Txato in a visit to his tomb:

“Tengo una gran necesidad de saber. La he tenido siempre. Y no me van a parar. Nadie me va a parar” (Patria 24). As a victim of terrorism, Bittori needed to overcome the trauma. Judith Herman has identified three necessary stages for victims to complete their recovery, “establishing safety, reconstructing the trauma story, and restoring the connection between survivors and their community” (3). Bittori first established safety by leaving her town. Later, her conversations with

Txato and the letter from Joxe Mari have helped her reconstruct the trauma story. The final stage of the process was her return to the old house in the town where the events took place, reconnecting with neighbors and finally with Joxian and Miren. The circle is completed when Miren and Bittori meet in a public space and briefly embrace, without talking to each other (“No se dijeron nada”).

190 Conclusions

The objective of this dissertation was to examine three novels written by Basque authors during the first two decades of the 21st century in order to illustrate how Basque society’s perception of ETA has evolved within the context of global terrorism since the events of September

11, 2001. As society slowly transforms and recognizes the plight of victims of terrorism, Basque narrative turns its focus on the victims of terrorism rather than discussing nationalist ideologies. I wanted to include in this selection writers who wrote in Spanish and those who wrote in Basque.

As I am not fluent in the Basque language I relied on Spanish translations. The novels studied were El ángulo ciego, by Luisa Etxenike, Soinujolearen semea/ El hijo del acordeonista, by

Bernardo Atxaga, and the most recent published in 2016, Patria by Fernando Aramburu. It was established that in the general panorama of contemporary Basque literature, the topic of the so- called Basque conflict, “appears to point toward an ethical examination of violence in order to disown … the focus has moved to an examination of violence on society” (Kortazar, “The

Challenge” 178).

The novels have been analyzed following three main lines of enquiry: the portrayal of

Basque terrorism, literature as an ethical commitment and the aesthetics of the novels. I have argued that the three authors selected have constructed narratives that reconcile aesthetics and ethical commitment when addressing the violent reality of life in the Basque Country and the terrorism of the group ETA in a complex historical and social moment. My line of enquiry approached Luisa Etxenike’s El ángulo ciego as a novel that emphasizes the trauma suffered by indirect victims of terrorism, those who have lost a family member or have been affected by the aftermath of terrorism. I discussed the tension between communities and individuals and the spiral of silence derived from ideological radicalization. Etxenike’s novel fosters a narrative of ethics -

191 a personal moral reflection on the world and more precisely about terrorism by means of elements characteristic of literary narrative. Martín’s autobiography becomes an individual testimony in the sense that it is narrated in the first person. However, when it refers to a historical-collective trauma, it reflects not only the experiences of the autobiographical self, but also those lived by other people around them. Etxenike’s narrative from the point of view of the victims emerges as a compelling approach to write a novel about terrorism establishing an ethical message by means of Martín’s journey and transformation. Martín’s decision to fictionalize what happened underlines the role of literature in portraying universal issues such as terrorism from an intimate perspective.

When examining Atxaga’s Soinujolearen semea/El hijo del acordeonista, I focused on the narrative exploring memory, fiction and transformation while considering it a polyphonic text greatly mediated, as the initial story is revised and transformed before it becomes the novel readers encounter. I drew special attention to the structure of the novel. It was determined that Atxaga uses the idea of regeneration and the pre-eminence of the circular over the straight line to form the structural core of the novel. In doing so, he creates art of history and privileges circular memory over linear memory. I described chapter “El primer americano de Obaba”, the most fictitious text of the novel and one of the most evident manifestations of the monomyth. Additionally, I highlighted the fact that while there is a chapter entitled “El comienzo”, there is nothing called “El final”. By leaving it as an “open ending” Atxaga strives to make his novel more challenging to stereotype, refusing to put a fixed limit on his text. He rejects to frame it completely making his multiple stories of the monomyth, such as the Chinese boxes through which readers have observed a fictional character’s universalization through metafiction, thus emphasizing the inclination towards aesthetic subjectivity instead of the thesis novel. Bernardo Atxaga descends to the

192 peculiarity of the history of Obaba and re-emerges having created a work of tremendous universality.

If Etxenike’s novel focuses on the victims of terrorism and Atxaga explores the intricacies of memory and fiction, Fernando Aramburu attempts to encompass multiple issues and perspectives in his novel Patria. Aramburu is motivated to write Patria to reflect on how ordinary people manage to survive in an environment where violence, both physical and psychological, was so embedded in their daily life. By means of a fictional account of the past he succeeds in representing, with a certain degree of lucidity, how life continued, people went to work, children attended school, ultimately being able to move forward after decades of enduring the constant threat of violence, intimidation, and isolation in the heart of a society as polarized as the Basque

Country was during those years. For Aramburu, this attempt of a fictional testimony is achieved by means of artistic expression, in this case using literature, complementing the historical view of events and facts. Fiction allows him to document that space of intimacy where people inhabit that which cannot be reached by historical accounts or news reports. Just like Unamuno, Aramburu attempts to testify that “intrahistoria”, retaking the mission of the writer to document with their words the reality of the human condition whatever that may be (terrorism, love, anguish, passion).

I organized the dissertation in four chapters. Chapter I was divided into three sections. In the first part I discussed the current status of contemporary Basque narrative in light of the idea of commitment, its relation to the so-called social literature and its role in Spain during the postwar years. As Atxaga writes in Basque, a minority language, I aimed to discuss issues appertaining to writing in the margins. In order to situate the novels studied in the dissertation within the context of contemporary narrative, I considered the concept of literary field as posited by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Since I hypothesized that these novels revealed the moral commitment

193 of the authors and their stance on the terrorism of ETA, I examined the potential relationship with the so-called social literature in Spain in the late 1940s and early 1950s. To provide a sociohistorical background, I referred to several studies including Pablo Gil Casado’s (La novela social), Gonzalo Sobejano’s (Novela española de nuesro tiempo (en busca del pueblo perdido)), and Vance Holloway’s El posmodernismo y otras tendencias de la novela española actual (1967-

1995), where the main characteristics of the social novel were discussed together with the most significant authors. Considering the aesthetics of the novels, I referred to the tension between the social novel and the structural novel (exemplified by Benet) and examined the theory of Jan

Mukarovský who warns that an immanent study of the literary work would be incomplete, because it would not capture the three components of the artistic sign.

In the second part I considered ethics and literature and provided a socio-historical background to the dichotomy docere-delectare, while examining the position of several theorists.

In the field of Modern Peninsular Studies, I highlighted María Teresa López de la Vieja’s theory on the intersection between ethics and literature. López de la Vieja argues that literature through fiction is adept at inducing a certain behavior. Supporters of this argument include Martha

Nussbaum and Wayne Booth. Michael Eskin determines that ethics and literature need each other.

This section concluded citing Zachary Newton’s theory on the relationship between ethics and narrative. The final section of Chapter I examined the history of terrorism throughout history, and its evolution and nexus with literature. I quoted the works of Julio Caro Baroja, Stephen

Nathanson, Walter Laqueur, Javier Tussell and Michael Burleigh. I surveyed ETA’s terrorism since its foundation until its recent dissolution. I noted a number of important groundbreaking novels where terrorism is a theme of their work (Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Demons, and Joseph

Conrad’s The Secret Agent). A number of studies on literature and terrorism were outlined

194 including the works of Margaret Scanlan, Alex Houden, Daniel Georud, and Susana Sueiro

Seoane. María Dolores Alonso Rey makes an extensive review on the image of the terrorist in the contemporary novel and established a corpus composed of seventeen novels published between

1960 and 2002.

In Chapter II I analyzed how the victims of terrorism are portrayed in Luisa Etxenike’s El

ángulo ciego. I argued that Etxenike, through her central characters, confronts and denounces the violent discourse advocated by terrorists, and positions herself as a committed author. El ángulo ciego fosters a narrative of ethics - a personal moral reflection on the world and in particular about terrorism by means of elements characteristic of literary narrative. To support my argument, I applied Zachary Newton’s Narrative Ethics, understood as a hybrid discourse by which it reflects on moral questions. In the novel, the narrative ethics is developed in the elements of the narrative discourse. The novel’s moral reflections are exposed by questioning the loss of moral referents, and the search for redemption by means of events, space and the characters. In this chapter I quoted the work of María Dolores Alonso-Rey who in her study, “Meta-ficción, irenismo y víctimas del terrorismo en El ángulo ciego”, argues that Etxenike’s uses postmodern metafiction and aesthetics to highlight a message that demands the dignity of the victim and the ethical imperative of opposing terrorism.

Chapter III focused on Bernardo Atxaga’s El hijo del acordeonista, with emphasis on the structural form of the novel, and its circular nature. Furthermore, I analyzed the novel examining the relationship between memory and history. In order to support my thesis, I referred to the domain of archetypal myths as described by Joseph Campbell (The Hero with a Thousand Faces).

By examining this aspect, it became obvious that the novel depicts a series of transformations repeated time after time: a paradise lost, a descent into hell, and a personal reinvention each time.

195 In this chapter I also described the interpretative concept of lieux de mémoire – sites of memory as proposed by Pierre Nora (“Between Memory and History: Les Lieux De Mémoir”). These sites of memory are an artificial, historical reconstructions where remembrance “comes to us from the outside” compared to the natural “real environments” of collective historical consciousness. David restores his memory by looking through photos taken throughout his life. The photos and the carvings that David contemplates are lieux de memoire as they represent a frozen moment, a concentration of memory that has managed to been preserved and protected from the raging progress of history and in which the same memory is anchored.

In Chapter IV Fernando Aramburu’s Patria was analyzed by illustrating the ideas of memory and commitment and their relationship with literature. Patria represents a testimony of the reconstruction of the collective memory based on fiction. In analyzing the novel, I demonstrated the validity of a cultural commitment with socio-political issues (terrorism). I cited studies by Irene Klein (La ficción de la memoria, 2014), and Susan Ynés Gonzalez (Literatura y memoria: espacios de subjetividad, 2014) who develop their theories from Paul Ricoeur

“hermeneutics of distance”. Social issues in contemporary novels besides terrorism were examined establishing Patria as a testimonial novel written when ETA has ceased its activities. As the subject of this endeavor is committed literature, I reviewed a conference series “Ciclo Literatura y

Compromiso Social” that took place in Madrid during the course of seven months in 2000. The conference featured prominent authors and politicians, (Almudena Grandes, José Saramago,

Francisco Umbral, Alfonso Guerra, Joaquin Leguina), who debated the role of literature in the 21st century.

At the end of the second decade of the new millennium, literature remains an important part of collective culture. In terms of the thematic featured in the novels written during this period,

196 it may be described as a narrative concerned with reviewing, and rediscovering collective traumatic episodes and historical processes still present and part of the collective cultural memory.

In describing the works of Etxenike, Atxaga, and Aramburu as examples of a new “social novel”,

I have made connections with the thematic of the those works, and compared the socio historical events of the 1940s and 1950s with the social reality of the 21st century. In terms of theorics or scholars who specifically analyze or define this contemporary social novel, there is a lack of published studies. Instead most of the current anthologies or studies discuss the state of contemporary narrative in its entirety. One of the most recent one by José María Pozuelo Yvancos,

La novela española del siglo XXI, (2017) features a selection of diverse authors. Pozuelos examines the new narrative and identifies an eclectic kaleisdoscope of styles used to reflect on issues such as the endemic economic and political crisis in Spain. As concerns literature written in

Basque, there are a number of scholars who published monographies, and anthologies. Several publications have contributed to this dissertation as I have consulted the works of the following scholars: Jon Kortazar’s “Contemporary Basque Literature” (2012), Mari Jose Olaziregi’s Waking the Hedgehog: The Literary Universe of Bernardo Atxaga (2005), and Joseba Gabilondo’s Before

Babel: A History of Basque Literature (2016).

The interdisciplinary approach to this study aimed to provide a background not only to the sociohistorical complexities surrounding the state of contemporary Basque narrative, but also the dynamic in the fields of production. By examining these aspects, it became obvious that the issue of terrorism had been featured in both novels written in Spanish and Basque long before ETA became defunct. As individuals living in a concrete historical time, authors observe and comment on the events they witness. The tension between art for art’s sake and art as a commodity has been documented throughout the ages for obvious reasons. The new social novel is the continuation of

197 the tradition of “engaged literature”. A literature that shines away from mere propaganda and instead can be decisive in order to harmonize the contemplative virtues with the social realities to integrate the ethics of conviction and the ethics of responsibility.

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