Memory and resistance in the work of Julio Llamazares

Abstract

Throughout the literary and journalistic trajectory of Julio Llamazares, considering the initial poems gathered in La lentitud de los Bueyes (1979) and Memoria de la Nieve (1981), the novels Luna de Lobos (1985), La Lluvia Amarilla (1988), and Escenas del Cine Mudo (1994), travel books such as El Río del Olvido (1990), and the texts published in newspapers, we notice a permanent link between memory and resistance. With this alliance, we postulate that it resonates with the tradition that privileged the value of criticism to contemplate the courses of modernity and its crises (O. Paz, A. Compagnon, A. Huyssen, E. Subirats). Space establishes itself as a place of resistance through the meticulous elaboration of a style in which slow time seems to reject the triumphant model imposed: a society without memory, in permanent change. From the critical tradition, appealing to memory, Llamazares fictionalizes or narrativizes, in his literature, the conflicts caused by human displacements in the interior of Spain, that occurred with more intensity in the second half of the 20th century and, more recently, those that derive from migrations on a planetary scale. Focusing on these phenomena, Llamazares identifies effects of modernity that compromise time and space, and his perspective lines with equally critical views of other Spanish writers (Juan José Millás, Felix de Azúa, Manuel Rivas, Sergio del Molino)