Dictatorship Noir: Post-war Spanish History in Carlos Ruiz Zafon's La sombra del viento

Abstract

Carlos Ruiz Zafón's novel La sombra del viento, published in 2001, has led post-Franco Spanish fiction to new heights of popularity. Its categorization as merely a popular novel obscures the fact that Ruiz Zafón makes palatable for an international audience a dark period in Spanish history: the oppressed, poverty-ravaged, and culturally-stifled Barcelona of the immediate post-war years. In this article I analyse the historical undercurrent visible in La sombra del viento, discussing its role in creating the larger mysterious and romantic setting of the story and in bringing to light the interplay between history and fiction operating in the novel. An examination of La sombra del viento as a twenty-first-century addition to Spanish historical fiction allows its interpretation as a manifestation of an emerging globalized Spanish literary market. This article stresses the need to expand critical inquiry to address the importance of 'anti-canonical' and genre-blending works of popular fiction, such as Ruiz Zafón's novel, in the formation of a modern historical consciousness both in Spain and of Spain on an international stage.