An unpublished and censored novel by Teresa Pàmies

Abstract

At just seventeen years old and in the full throes of the Spanish Civil War Teresa Pàmies became a member of the executive committee of the Catalan socialist youth movement Joventuts Socialistes Unificades de Catalunya (JSUC). But she also fought on other fronts: volunteering, associations, political propaganda, journalism, and a long etc. She spent more than thirty years in exile until her return to Barcelona in 1971, thanks to her winning the Josep Pla literary prize for Testament in Prague. At that time she was earning a living from writing and  translating: from 1975 to 1979 she published fifteen original works and from 1972 to 1978 around twenty translations. Una noia i un soldat (novel·la de la guerra civil) (A girl and a soldier –novel of the Civil War) dated 1972, was one of the first that she completed here. The Destino publishing house immediately handed it over to the censor, who emphatically prohibited its publication. It is a work of fiction based on autobiography – an autofiction – written partly about the author’s war experience, but intertwined with a carefully woven love story in which the two main characters each have their own voice. Both the subject of the plot and the way in which it was developed challenged political, social, moral and religious dogmas that were untouchable for the regime. It is held in the General Archive of the Administration in Alcalá de Henares and remains unpublished to this day.