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Black Bread (novel)
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Black Bread (novel)
Black Bread (Catalan: Pa negre) is a semi-autobiographical novel published by the Catalan pedagogue, journalist and writer, Emili Teixidor i Viladecàs in 2003, when the author was seventy years old, it describes the coming of age of a young boy in the repressive aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in rural Catalonia.
The book’s title refers to the dark bread rationed to the poor in Spain during the 1940s, the “hungry years”. It is a metaphor for the post-Civil War period marked by widespread poverty, a thriving black market, and the ongoing repression of the Franco regime.
The narrator, eleven-year-old Andreu, whose father is a political prisoner and whose mother is a factory worker, is sent to live with tenant farmer relatives in rural Catalonia after the war. He settles into a seemingly idyllic rural life with his young cousins, observing the adult world from the vantage of a plum tree. However, the miseries of Catalonia under fascist domination begin to encroach upon this idyll. We learn that Andreu’s father is facing a death sentence for his political activities, his mother, after working long hours in the factory, is desperately lobbying local bigwigs to obtain his release, Andreu’s cousin’s parents have been forced to seek exile in France and that the large family in the farmhouse is viewed with suspicion by the local Francoist authorities and the Civil Guard. The survival of the family entails subterfuge and secrecy. Andreu and his cousins struggle to understand the language charged with double meanings that the adults of the family use when discussing their secrets, the “language of gestures, grimaces, exclamations, hints and half-words”.
The children have their own secret world as they roam through the woods, catching sight of lovers, thieves and a woman who went mad after her boyfriend had been executed in front of her and now runs naked between the trees. At the same time, they also become very aware of their own awakening sexuality.
When the children discover a disembowelled, stolen horse which has been left to rot on the farm grounds, the mysterious death of such a beautiful animal signals to the children that their days of innocence are coming to an end. Andreu says “Once we’d run out of stories, the ghost of that dead horse returned to fill the gap in our conversation”. Unlike his classmates, he is clear that he does not wish to end up working on the land or the factory floor and when his father dies in prison, he is presented with the possibility of continuing his education under the wing of the affluent owners of the farmhouse and lands, who unlike his own family are among the victors in the Civil War. But this entails Andreu moving elsewhere and leaving his family behind.
Andreu’s experience is that of children “who find their parents have been defeated and that the victors simply intend to continue the war by other means.”. He runs free in the woods, but everything—language, school, opinions—is circumscribed by the dictatorship. His father is in prison and sentenced to death as a ‘red’ and the wider family is under suspicion from the local Francoist authorities. Even his uncle, the head of household at the farm, who has never been active politically, is suspect for “sitting on the fence” during the Civil War and not getting involved now in “cleaning up the Fatherhood”. All this leads to an atmosphere of fear, subterfuge and deception among the family members, which the children seek to decode: “The outside world was divided up between our folk and the others we guessed were enemies. We gradually discovered that the others were also the fascists”.
The Francoist propaganda depicted the Civil War as a religious crusade against the “atheist-masonic-judaeo-bolshevik” Second Spanish Republic. The Spanish bishops gave full support to Franco’s uprising. Following the brutal destruction of Guernica by the Luftwaffe, the hierarchy of the Spanish church expressed support for Franco’s uprising, which they described as an “armed plebiscite”.
Following the Francoist victory, attendance at mass was made compulsory for the whole population as was the First Communion for all children. Teachers at school questioned their pupils to make sure they had attended mass the previous day. Andreu explains: “On Monday when we reached school, the master made us say which mass we’d been to, with whom, what was the colour of the celebrant’s chasuble, what was the sermon about, who’d seen us there.”
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Black Bread (novel)
Black Bread (Catalan: Pa negre) is a semi-autobiographical novel published by the Catalan pedagogue, journalist and writer, Emili Teixidor i Viladecàs in 2003, when the author was seventy years old, it describes the coming of age of a young boy in the repressive aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in rural Catalonia.
The book’s title refers to the dark bread rationed to the poor in Spain during the 1940s, the “hungry years”. It is a metaphor for the post-Civil War period marked by widespread poverty, a thriving black market, and the ongoing repression of the Franco regime.
The narrator, eleven-year-old Andreu, whose father is a political prisoner and whose mother is a factory worker, is sent to live with tenant farmer relatives in rural Catalonia after the war. He settles into a seemingly idyllic rural life with his young cousins, observing the adult world from the vantage of a plum tree. However, the miseries of Catalonia under fascist domination begin to encroach upon this idyll. We learn that Andreu’s father is facing a death sentence for his political activities, his mother, after working long hours in the factory, is desperately lobbying local bigwigs to obtain his release, Andreu’s cousin’s parents have been forced to seek exile in France and that the large family in the farmhouse is viewed with suspicion by the local Francoist authorities and the Civil Guard. The survival of the family entails subterfuge and secrecy. Andreu and his cousins struggle to understand the language charged with double meanings that the adults of the family use when discussing their secrets, the “language of gestures, grimaces, exclamations, hints and half-words”.
The children have their own secret world as they roam through the woods, catching sight of lovers, thieves and a woman who went mad after her boyfriend had been executed in front of her and now runs naked between the trees. At the same time, they also become very aware of their own awakening sexuality.
When the children discover a disembowelled, stolen horse which has been left to rot on the farm grounds, the mysterious death of such a beautiful animal signals to the children that their days of innocence are coming to an end. Andreu says “Once we’d run out of stories, the ghost of that dead horse returned to fill the gap in our conversation”. Unlike his classmates, he is clear that he does not wish to end up working on the land or the factory floor and when his father dies in prison, he is presented with the possibility of continuing his education under the wing of the affluent owners of the farmhouse and lands, who unlike his own family are among the victors in the Civil War. But this entails Andreu moving elsewhere and leaving his family behind.
Andreu’s experience is that of children “who find their parents have been defeated and that the victors simply intend to continue the war by other means.”. He runs free in the woods, but everything—language, school, opinions—is circumscribed by the dictatorship. His father is in prison and sentenced to death as a ‘red’ and the wider family is under suspicion from the local Francoist authorities. Even his uncle, the head of household at the farm, who has never been active politically, is suspect for “sitting on the fence” during the Civil War and not getting involved now in “cleaning up the Fatherhood”. All this leads to an atmosphere of fear, subterfuge and deception among the family members, which the children seek to decode: “The outside world was divided up between our folk and the others we guessed were enemies. We gradually discovered that the others were also the fascists”.
The Francoist propaganda depicted the Civil War as a religious crusade against the “atheist-masonic-judaeo-bolshevik” Second Spanish Republic. The Spanish bishops gave full support to Franco’s uprising. Following the brutal destruction of Guernica by the Luftwaffe, the hierarchy of the Spanish church expressed support for Franco’s uprising, which they described as an “armed plebiscite”.
Following the Francoist victory, attendance at mass was made compulsory for the whole population as was the First Communion for all children. Teachers at school questioned their pupils to make sure they had attended mass the previous day. Andreu explains: “On Monday when we reached school, the master made us say which mass we’d been to, with whom, what was the colour of the celebrant’s chasuble, what was the sermon about, who’d seen us there.”