Lorenzo Silva, Recordarán tu nombre [They will remember your name], 2017, 496 p.
Publisher’s summary:
In this novel Lorenzo Silva narrates in the first person how he discovered one of the most heroic and tragic moments of Spanish history, surprisingly forgotten by nearly everybody. A key event marked by the antagonism between two men. The history of the military coup in Barcelona on July 19, 1936, the General Goded’s challenge of the republican legality, and General Aranguren’s, the top responsible of the Guardia Civil, decision, who chose to defend democracy.
Aranguren’s refusal to collaborate with the coup and his faithfulness to the Republic are part of our history, but a part that is seldom narrated. And the fact that this is one of our least known and most awkward episodes turns it into one of the best stories that the literature on the Civil War can give us.
This is the story of a forgotten hero. A man who was able to set loyalty and his sense of duty before the orders of those who would end up in power.
The critic Jordi Amat agrees that the General Aranguren is a fascinating figure and that Silva managed to collect quite a lot of important material in his book, but he doubts that it works as a novel:
“He soaked in the best bibliography, he talked to the descendants of the protagonist and he searched the archives. … As a biographic reconstruction, the book works. … More doubtful, on the other hand, is to determine if the transformation of this information is a magnetic narrative artefact as pretended by a good novel. The story couldn’t be more forceful and had to be explained, but so much meticulousness tires the reader because the commotion of the facts lies, above all, not in the precision but in the effectiveness with which they are reworked.”
This blogger enjoyed some of Silva’s crime novels in the past. There is 2015 post on one of his books.
At the same time as Silva’s novel, there appeared Sonsoles Ónega’s Después del amor, set also in the Barcelona of the Spanish Civil War (blog post).
SOURCE: Destino (Planeta, publisher); review in “Cultura/s”, La Vanguardia, July 8, 2017, pp. 4-5 [printed edition]
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