De Pedra de Tartera a País Íntim: Pirineu i guerra civil en les novel·les de Maria Barbal

Abstract

Like Maria Barbal’s first novel, Pedra de tartera (1985), Pais intim, published 20 years later in 2005, is set in the author’s particular universe of el Pallars in the Catalan Pyrenees. This article will analyse two central topics within Barbal’s works, namely el Pallars and the Spanish Civil War, in order to discern in what ways and to what extent these two topics define Barbal’s intimate landscape. The author starts her literary trajectory by fictionalizing the history of a place and a time that were shaken by the historical, political, and social events of the twentieth century, and she completes the tale 20 years later with Pais intim. With the personal stories of the characters that inhabit Maria Barbal’s novels in el Pallars, significant links are established between the landscape and the consequences of the Civil War.