Escaping Spanish totalitarianism in a four-wheel drive

Abstract

This essay offers an analysis of Spanish author Manuel Leguineche's El camino más corto (1978) (The Shortest Route), which is a travel account of the 1965 attempt to establish a new record for the fastest trip around the world by car. The expedition gave the young journalist the opportunity to escape from the constraints imposed in Spain by the fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939–1975), and his book became an instant success and a landmark in the evolution of Spanish travel writing. It came to be one of the transitional texts in which a generation of intrepid Spaniards would practise a new paradigm of travel accounts: fast-paced, international and adventurous. The book moves beyond the type of travel and writing about travel practised by Spanish social realist writers of the 1960s, which frequently consisted of walking excursions through poor rural areas of Spain as a way to protest the totalitarian regime. Leguineche's book moved away from the social realist style and aimed to incorporate adventure, fun and an international perspective without sacrificing political awareness.