Pío Baroja y las miserias de la guerra

Abstract

The posthumous publication of Miserias de la guerra in 2006, fifty-five years after Pio Baroja had presented it to Franco’s censors, forced Spanish critics, like Jose-Carlos Mainer, to rethink the position of the Basque writer in the eve of the Spanish Civil War. Baroja was always absolutely critical in relation to the Spanish policy, but he seemed to have chosen silence prior to and during the war. This article proposes, firstly, a link between Baroja’s work and his own biography in order to, eventually accommodate its place in the narrative of the Spanish Civil War. Finally, we will analyze Miserias de la guerra, the essayistic novel that discusses the moments before the civil war and describes Madrid during that period.