Happiness, otherwise resistance – ElLitoral.com

ON “KISSES IN THE PAN” (2015), OF A BIG

Happiness, otherwise resistance

The Spanish writer.

Photo: FILE

By Maria Luisa Miretti

This time, Big Almudena (Madrid, 1960) allows us to breathe, as their novel does not have the magnitude of previous works that left us breathless for its size, but those who follow it closely and we know through the magnificent trilogy offered the Spanish civil war, now surprises us with this problem in which , without letting the socio-political Spanish, context falls squarely in the current crisis, in which the characters come together, victims of a wild consumerism under the powerful wicked smile.

Tender, hard, fierce and tragicomic moments is a stark description of the capitalist consumer society that has remained in suspense to Spain in recent times through successive dismissals intimations of real estate, bank reserves, mortgage loans converted into evictions , whole families huddle and had to rely on the pension of grandparents, fierce migratory exodus, coupled with the emergence of Chinese tide and labor supply pelirrubio work 24 hours plus an unfair labor supply.

But this is only part of the story. The most valuable of the past-more novel style and ideological commitment of the author always repeated and demonstrated throughout his work-is the recovery of a tradition: the links with the past, with a culture and an identity to extinction .

“If our ancestors saw us, they first die laughing after it. Because for them this would not be a crisis but a slight setback. But the Spaniards, who learned to be poor with dignity for many centuries, had never known to be docile. Never, until now. “

And this in a clear reference to were always poor, who lived in a poor country, even at a time when the kings of Spain the masters of the world believed that the American gold went directly to Flanders to pay the debts of the Crown. They always lived under the poverty and know what is being cold and begging, although it was a dignified poverty and if he fell a piece of bread to the ground, forcing the children to raise and kiss before you put it in the bread basket .

But then someone asked to forget all this and the links to the tradition were lost, giving way to globalization, modernity and post-modernity, of Hand pain and destruction.

In this context, appears on the scene a grandmother who advances the Christmas tree decorating to change the family environment, or hear a sob man loneliness behind the partition, or are moving in the neighborhood some Chinese, in a business, that day becomes hairdressing or manicure, always under the sensitive eye of an author to which he does not miss any details, especially the suffering of ordinary citizens of a postmodern Madrid, where everything shines in appearance but inside cracks.

strong social connotation, is a choral novel that reflects the universe created by members of a Madrid family and surroundings: neighbors, friends and neighborhood, including the wonderful hairdresser with their Chinese clients and the maid, nothing escapes the world represented is none other than the continuation of reality <. /> p>

In the words of the author: “We lost capital, references and links to the past.” It is always the narrative voice dialing, reporting and notes, whether child hunger in classrooms, the dismantling of public health, banking scams, the housing bubble, so as they appear situations, types characterized acquire the dramatic relevance of each. It is a novel of contrasts, very livable, with all the imprint of orality and direct observation, in which a huge variety of records, giving pace, strength and dynamism appears.