Problematic Identities in Manuel Vila’s “Spain”

Abstract

Through an interview published shortly after the appearance of Spain, Manuel Vilas himself affirmed that one of the main issues that arise from the reading of his book is identity. This ironic, polyhedral and fragmented novel becomes a clear literary and intellectual exercise destined, among other things, to explore the limits of a complex social and cultural identity. This complexity is based on multiple variants, but in the article we will specifically attend to all those related to the literary and contextual problems. In that sense, Spain is a clear example of the way in which literary discourses generate, through the choice of a concrete aesthetic form, the representation of the different levels of a problematic cultural identity construction process.