"Un acto más de la agricultura". Nostalgia y crí­tica del pasado franquista en Tranví­a a la Malvarrosa de Manuel Vicent

Abstract

The novel Tranví­a a la Malvarrosa (1994) by Manuel Vicent evokes a nostalgic image of the past: the smells, colours, and sounds of 1950s Valencia make the sentimental, professional and moral education of the protagonist appear highly attractive. However, while the novel's narrator remembers those days nostalgically, he simultaneously criticises the francoist regime that formed their background. The combination of a critical sentiment with a nostalgic one seems slightly paradoxical, but it can be supposed that criticism of the past contains and controls the emotional force of nostalgia. Nonetheless, in this case it turns out that nostalgia ends up undermining the critical tone. In fact, the emphasis the narrator places on the dark sides of the past heightens his nostalgia, since it suggests a decadence that is attractive and intriguing