Literature and Memory. Pedra de tartera, by Maria Barbal, and the Memory of the Spanish Civil War

Abstract

Maria Barbal’s Pallars Cycle has its origin in Pedra de tartera. In this cycle Barbal creates a literary universe which recovers lost space and time: rural life in the Pyrenees during the mid-20th century. Main threads articulating this cycle are the Spanish Civil War and rural exodus. Both events relate Pedra de tartera with memory narratives that deal with remembrance and testimonies of war and its aftermath. The article aims to ground the relationship between the novel’s structuring of war memory through literary reconstruction of the past, fictionalizations of memory and relationship between historic and literary facts.