2 - Language, Literature and the Writer in Franco's Catalonia

Summary

Generational and ideological divisions between the post-war writers

This chapter aims to describe from a critical perspective the social, political and cultural conditions that prompted Sales, Benguerel, Arbó and Espriu to revise their work, and concentrates in particular on the literary and linguistic controversies of the early 1950s and the 1960s. This will allow us to identify the conditions, the participants, the structures and the patterns of these debates in order to shed light upon ideological struggles that converged on language and literature.

In the aftermath of the war, Catalan writers were isolated and scarcely tolerated and could not have any significant impact on contemporary society. As Triadú pointed out, ‘els escriptors de l'època el present “oficial” el sentien com un futur “passat”, gairebé com un parèntesi’. The cultural intelligentsia tried to maintain the illusion of a relatively autonomous literary system, but the reality was that the regime's fierce Castilian-centric policies prevented the general public from becoming aware of its existence. It was not until the 1960s that the cultural environment showed signs of recovery, when books slowly started to gain public attention with new publications such as Serra d'Or (1959) and the popularisation of literary awards such as the Premi Sant Jordi (1960). This change has to be attributed in part to the unprecedented economic growth that affected Spain at that time, which was the result of rapid industrialisation and the emergence of mass tourism.