Almudena Grandes and the "Problem of Spain"

Abstract:

From 2008 until her untimely death in 2021, Almudena Grandes wrote a weekly column in El País where she often addressed, and lamented, the state of Spanish democracy and the need to reconcile Spain's history for a chance at a better future, a topic familiar to readers of her novels. Although her fiction writing on these themes is well studied, her nonfiction has garnered less attention. The 2019 publication of a selection of these columns, La herida perpetua, spanning the decade marked by the 2008 economic crisis through the 2018 resurgence of the far right, provides us an opportunity to look more closely at the impact and importance of Grandes's nonfiction. Informed by recent scholarship on the state of Spanish democracy and criticism of traditional narratives of the transition to democracy (1975–1982), I argue that these columns represent a public call to action with the goal of (re)building a society that values open debate and fosters an active citizenry, one with the resilience to exercise their rights daily to hold accountable corrupt politicians. Collecting a selection of Grandes's weekly writing into one volume allows readers to contemplate the political events of an important period in Spain's democracy and to engage the legacies of the past while suggesting possibilities for the future, a dialogical exchange that defines democracy and is necessary for its survival.