«But you last, you never descend, and the sea sighs / or roars, for you, city of my happy days, / mother and whitest city where I lived, and I remember, / angelic city that, higher than the sea, you preside over its foams . / Streets barely, slight, musical. Gardens / where tropical flowers raise their youthful thick palms,” Vicente Aleixandre wrote about Malaga in his great collection of poems ‘Shadow of Paradise’. That Eden became hell during the fratricidal conflict of 1936. An especially bloody episode occurred in the Andalusian city: the bombing of civilians fleeing along the road at the hands of Franco’s army. This tragedy was experienced firsthand by the family of Antonio Soler (Málaga, 1956), author of ‘The Dead Dancers’, ‘The Way of the English’, ‘Sur’, and ‘I Who Was a Dog’, among other titles. , which have earned him numerous awards, such as the Primavera, the Nadal and the National Critics’ Award. What happened on a fateful February 1937 on the so-called Highway of Death was told to him above all by his grandmother and his mother. And now he tells us about it in his latest novel ‘The Day of the Wolf’ (Espasa). —How would you rate ‘The Day of the Wolf’? Autofiction?—In my opinion, the labels are not the most important thing, but the result. Above all, I have tried to make an honest book, with narrative inspiration, where I deal with a terrible episode of our Civil War, which affected hundreds of people, including my family very directly. In this sense, we could say that it has an autobiographical basis, although, obviously, I did not live it, but I have always felt it very close, through the memories of my family, who never forgot that walk along that road and everything that they saw in her. As a child and teenager I asked my maternal grandmother to tell me what happened, and then I asked her again, as an adult, and also my mother. Regarding autofiction, of course legitimate for those who choose it, it is a term that seems somewhat striking to me. In reality, perhaps what is now called that, in many cases is autobiography or memoirs. «The Transition, with its lights and shadows, despite its imperfections, was a success. It is a mistake to attack it»—Has the basis, then, fundamentally been an oral ‘documentation’, through those family stories? I imagine you have also consulted history books. At some points he summarizes and explains the context: the tense elections of 1936, the growing upheaval that led to the conflagration…—When I tackled this novel, I had read a lot about the period. Although I have not stopped delving deeper, since the Civil War has generated an immense and overwhelming bibliography. However, the trunk is made up of my family’s memories. And there are also literary references in some parts of the work, especially to ‘Long November of Madrid’, by Juan Eduardo Zúñiga, and ‘The Last Flags’, by Ángel María de Lera – my father fought in Madrid for the Republic –. Through all the elements I wanted to offer the reader the most complete overview possible. —Compared to other well-studied events of the war, such as that of Guernica, the exodus of civilians fleeing from Malaga has not been so studied…—Indeed, the massacre of the Highway of Death, sometimes called ‘La Desbandá’ , an expression that does not seem appropriate to me and I do not use in my book, has not been sufficiently treated. And it would have to be done rigorously. The brutal and continuous bombings that were carried out in February 1937, parallel to the highway, by three warships, Almirante Cervera, Baleares and Canarias, were promoted by Franco’s general Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, to whom numerous incendiary harangues issued are due. from Unión Radio Sevilla. But somehow the Republican Government abandoned Málaga to its fate and all those who were trying to escape from terror came across pure terror. The shame is shared. I don’t want to say that they have the same responsibility, the burden falls on the side of those who dropped the bombs. However, with what happened in Malaga, no one can exactly feel proud. “I don’t want to say that they have the same responsibility. But somehow the Republican Government abandoned Málaga to its fate.”—In addition to recounting that horror, you do not ignore others. The ‘wolf’ was on both sides in that fateful stage of our recent history, in that ‘uncivil’ war, as Miguel de Unamuno rightly judged it…—Yes, he was on both sides. For example, it also reflects the excesses of militiamen, whom the Government was unable to control, harassing and killing priests or those they considered to be right-wing. In the novel I tell a very significant event that my grandmother witnessed in the Alameda of Malaga. He did not understand what was happening until he heard voices that, laughing and then angry, shouted: “Let it fly, let it fly!” On the facade of the third floor of a building, several militiamen held a man until they finally threw him into the void. An event that remained forever in the brain of my grandmother, who told me a tale of merciless monsters and ogres in which no fairies or brave princes appeared anywhere. Only the enchantment of cruelty. That’s why my mother, when remembering that time, repeated that it was the triumph of madness, of unreason.—We defeated that ‘wolf’ that roamed freely everywhere in the Transition, which some denounce today. .—The Transition had its lights and shadows, but I think it was a privileged event, and it was not in vain that it was greeted as very positive, and admired, outside our borders. It is a mistake to attack her. Naturally it was imperfect, but looking at it from a distance, it was a success. And, on the other hand, it seems clumsy to me to continue playing a political trick with the Civil War. Opening the question of people, the mortal remains left in the ditches, seems unquestionable to me. But not that it is used partisanly. This only produces tension and radicalism that never lead to anything good. Antonio Soler participates in the ABC Culture Classroom on November 21, 2024.
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