Memorias incómodas: la División Azul en la literatura española contemporánea

Abstract

This article analyses a series of contemporary historical novels that focusses the narration on the characters’ experiences when fighting –as soldiers of the Spanish Division Azul and alongside the German’s army– communism in the Soviet Union. Furthermore, it concentrates specifically on the different ways the characters’ right wing and fascist ideology are portrayed taking into account the current theoretical approach on Historical Memory that revisits events that took place during the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship. The fictionalization of those characters that joined the Spanish Division Azul in the novels written by Almudena Grandes, Juan Manuel de Prada, Pio Moa, Ignacio del Valle y Lorenzo Silva shows that in some authors there is a clear Manichaean narrative strategy while other ones opt for a more critical and plural approach. The latter is open to a metanarrative deliberation on the creation of conflicting and disruptive memories in today’s cultural and literary Spain.