Josep Bertomeu Moll, Capvespre (Gandia: Lletra Impresa, 2016). 224 pages.
I was a rather naïve 11-year-old boy when Fascist dictator
Franco died, yet I do have a few memories of the difficult years before his
death, and particularly the profound changes that occurred in the years that
followed. It could very well be argued that more than 40 years later, those
political changes have turned out to be rather cosmetic in their nature. Spain has
basically retained the political status quo resulting from the military coup in
1936, the ensuing Civil War and forty years of a dictatorial regime. It is a
country where conservative elites and economic oligarchies exercise their unfettered
power, where corruption unashamedly spreads to the top echelons of government.
Unsurprisingly, though, a clear majority of voters continue to elect
politicians whose decency is, to say the least, questionable. Go figure.
In those years, my home town, Valencia, was not the markedly
touristic destination it seems to be today. Valencian life in the 1970s was
rather different from the easy-going, festive city it is in 2016. Then there
was fear in the streets, and news of the political repression elsewhere in the
Spanish State would have been very discreetly commented on by people in the
streets. One of my first memories associated with anything remotely political
is of my paternal grandmother telling me not to speak our local language
instead of Spanish when in public. I must have been about 5 or 6 years old.
This is the Valencia Capvespre
(The Evening) is set in. Written in
1977, the author kept it hidden in a drawer for decades until Lletra Impresa, an
enthusiastic publisher from Gandia, rescued the manuscript and took a gamble by
printing it as their first volume in their fresh fiction collection. Unless there are
more uncovered manuscripts of his, this might unfortunately turn out to be
Bertomeu’s only published book, since he unexpectedly passed away just a couple
of weeks ago.
A fragmentary narrative, Capvespre
follows the lives of Lluís and Pilar, the two main characters, whose complicated,
twisted, on-and-off relationship makes up the main plot of the novel. They are
part of a wider circle of friends, university students who fight the regime
hoping to achieve freedom, hoping to reach for their future, for their dreams
at a time when Francoist repression had intensified its brutal force. Moreover,
Bertomeu employs different narrative points of view, providing noteworthy
contrasts between the various characters about the same events.
The terrible mishaps associated with mandatory military
service, the patently injurious conditions for young females within what was a creepily
Catholic society, the lively nights of jazz music and cheap booze in well-known
bars of the different barrios of Valencia, the ground-breaking literature that
was landing at Spanish bookshops in those years (Neruda, César Vallejo,
Cortázar, Arguedas, García Márquez, Cabrera Infante, among others), the first
sexual experiences of very young men and women, the extremely risky business of
joining the then illegal Communist Party … these are some of the situations and
circumstances narrated by Lluís, or explained through letters by Pilar, Jordi,
Sergi. Bertomeu succeeds in contriving a 1977 narrative that feels way before
his time, and is at times more ‘contemporary’ than some novels written in
recent years, both in its circular structure and its utterly compelling style.
Non-conformism was an essential part of the philosophy of
the young people at the time. They would not abide by a State that repressed
and coerced them. Gathering in the streets and plazas of Valencia (which
Bertomeu cleverly identifies by using the Francoist names they had until the
late 1970s) to distribute radical pamphlets or marching in protest, the
students regularly had to run away from riot police, or occasionally clashed
with Fascist gangs at the Faculty.
 |
| For anyone arriving in Valencia by train, Plaza del Caudillo (wash your mouth, boy!) was an unavoidable passageway towards the bars in the older parts of the city. Today it is known as Plaça de l"Ajuntament. |
In Capvespre, some
of Lluís’s friends are arrested by Franco’s Secret Police and sent to jail,
where they languish for months or even years, found guilty in trials run by
ludicrous judges. Their crime? Wishing freedom for their peers and themselves.
Capvespre is a
welcome and necessary reminder of the struggle for dignity a whole generation
of Valencians engaged in. It should also help us to focus on the fact that 40
years later, younger generations of Valencians, let alone Spaniards, time and
again see how their hopes and their dreams are smashed by inept governments
that continue to underpin a decrepit, dishonest, fraudulent political system.
Apart from a few well-accomplished historical recreations
such as Silvestre
Vilaplana’s L’estany de foc, the city of Valencia had never really been
the protagonist of a book. It is a pleasant surprise to see how the city comes
alive in Bertomeu’s words, in his sharp-eyed descriptions. How unfortunate it
is that Bertomeu is no longer alive to write a sequel to Capvespre.
