“For me and for the others”. Resistance, Communities and Comunism in Episodios de una guerra interminable by Almudena Grandes

Abstract

Unlike the tradition in historical narration, the series Episodios de una guerra interminable by Almudena Grandes presents a narrative model far away from the dominant one, in which “everything moves around the sequence ‘event, discourse, supremacy of politics’ putting an enphasis on the making a decision of powerful individuals” (Ricœur 2010: 317). In this novel version of the post-war period, Grandes avoids to underline the role of such individuals, because it is a group —in particular, the network of anti-Franco members of the resistance— and their constant activity who made possible the historical change in the long term. The political activity of each community in a different  geographical  context  in every novel —Toulouse, Jaén, Madrid and Buenos Aires— is interconnected so that the conjuction of all of them outlines the coordination of a huge collective political subject, traditionally underrepresented in the Spanish public sphere. In this  historical fiction  the communist  resistance  is articulated  in political,  but especially emotional communities that cooperate one with another.