Spain is Different?: Historical Memory and the "Two Spains" in Turn-of-the-millennium Spanish Apocalyptic Fictions by Dale Knickerbocker

Abstract

Reviewed by: Spain is Different?: Historical Memory and the "Two Spains" in Turn-of-the-millennium Spanish Apocalyptic Fictions by Dale Knickerbocker Sara Martín (bio) SF as Historical Allegory: Apocalypse and Democracy in Spain. Dale Knickerbocker. Spain is Different?: Historical Memory and the "Two Spains" in Turn-of-the-millennium Spanish Apocalyptic Fictions. U of Wales P, 2022. 288 pp. $82 hc & ebk. Dale Knickerbocker is a professor of Hispanic Studies at East Carolina University and one of the US's most active specialists in the Spanish-language fantastic. His new book Spain is Different? is published in the Iberian and Latin American Studies series of the University of Wales Press and follows the publication of his edited volume Lingua Cosmica: Science Fiction from around the World (U of Illinois P, 2019), a fascinating tour of the many linguistic domains in which sf thrives. In contrast, Spain is Different? focuses specifically on six sf novels published in Spain between 1990 and 2005 by noted names in the field. According to Knickerbocker, these novels express in their (post-)apocalyptic plotlines anxieties regarding the history of Spain between the end of General Francisco Franco's regime (1939-1975) and the passage of the Law of Historical Memory in 2005 by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's Socialist government. This legislation intended, among other aims, to end the drama of the missing war victims still buried in mass graves. The title Spain is Different? alludes to the slogan that Franco's Minister of Information and Tourism, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, used in the 1960s to publicize the attractions of Spain among tourists. Knickerbocker's question is [End Page 574] whether Spain really is different—and hence the uniqueness of its apocalyptic turn-of-the millennium sf—or if it demonstrates the same preoccupations that currently articulate sf at an international level. The inevitable conclusion is that Spain is indeed different, yet it is also similar to other nations in which sf plays a similar allegorical function as a vehicle to discuss the tensions brought on by history. The novels Knickerbocker examines are Rosa Montero's Temblor [Tremor, 1990], Javier Negrete's Nox perpetua [Perpetual Night, 1996], Juan Miguel Aguilera's La locura de Dios [God's Folly, 1998], Enrique del Barco's Punto Omega [Omega Point, 2004], Eduardo Vaquerizo's Mentes de noche y hielo [Minds of Night and Ice, 2001], and José Miguel Pallarés and Amadeo Garrigós's Tiempo prestado [Borrowed Time, 2005]. Of these, only Temblor and La locura de Dios have been translated (into German and French respectively). It is to be hoped that Knickerbocker's monograph will interest prospective publishers and will result in more translations. Among the authors analyzed, all well-known in sf circles, Rosa Montero stands out as one of the most accomplished writers in Spain, as a journalist and as a novelist working in diverse genres. Knickerbocker introduces each author adequately, but readers might miss the fact that sf still occupies a marginal position in Spain beyond fandom circles. Knickerbocker also proficiently presents the theme of the "two Spains" and the historical situation of the nation at the turn of the millennium. Any minimally informed Spaniard can perceive a deep division between the more progressive, left-wing half of the country and the more backward, right-wing half. This is usually attributed to the Civil War (1936-1939) caused by Franco's coup against the legitimate democratic Republic (1931-1939), but readers of Benito Pérez Galdós's marvelous series of 46 novels, Episodios Nacionales [National Episodes, 1872-1912], will understand that the Civil War was yet another "episode" in this constant warfare between the two Spains. Knickerbocker dates this split back to King Philip V, crowned in 1700, the first monarch of the current Borbón dynasty and the man responsible for importing into obscurantist Catholic Spain the ideas of the French Enlightenment. Knickerbocker proposes that in these six sf novels the narrative about the two Spains resurfaces in a fantasy version shaped as much by the old tension between illustrated modernity and repressive religion as by current sf themes, with a special incidence of questions related...