España en el mundo globalizado: responsabilidades éticas y limites factuales del intelectual en El balneario (1986)

Abstract

Within the framework of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán's narrative production, El balneario (1986) is «a moral reflection on Spain's entry into Europe and its consequences» (Colmeiro, 2013: 16). In this novel, the author represents a literary sociography in which the official rhetoric -which represents the «Transición democrática» as a triumph of democratic values and national reconciliation- enters into dialogue with the standards of development required by other European democracies. The article sets out to analyse the narrative figuration of the intellectual that appears in the novel: it is through this specific social role that Vázquez Montalbán sets out to highlight the fracture between republican historical memory and the reality of capitalist post-modernity and, at the same time, to delve into the limits of the intellectual himself in terms of political and social impact.