Ideología, nostalgia e identidad en el exilio espańol: Perico en Londres (1947), de Esteban Salazar Chapela

Resumen

Ideology, nostalgia and identity in Spanish exile: Perico en Londres (1947) by Esteban Salazar Chapela

In his novel Perico en Londres, Esteban Salazar Chapela, Spanish intellectual from the Civil War, revisits the representations of the Republican ideology by using the strategy of a “masked autobiography”. This allows him to explain, through fictional characters, based on true personal stories, the nostalgic and anguished predicament of the exile. This article analyzes the literary strategies that Salazar Chapela uses in his novel Perico en Londres 1947 to represent not only the homesickness felt by the Spanish exiles, but also the nostalgia for the lost ideological dream of the Republican “paradise”. This novel about exile functions as a powerful tool to counter-argue the Francoist discourse. Consequently, the presupposed literary content becomes an autobiographical and biographical portrait of the social, cultural, economical and personal historical Spanish situation of that time.