ANSIEDADES SOCIALES, HISTORICISMO Y DEMOCRACIA EN DiAS DE LLAMAS DE JUAN ITURRALDE

The present article analyzes the representation of the Spanish Civil War, as a historical phenomenon, in Días de llamas, the best well-known novel of Juan Iturralde, José María Pérez Prat’s pen-name. From the theoretical frame proposed by Hayden White in his Metahistory, this essay discuss the thesis that Iturralde’s novel tries to give answers to the social anxieties provoked by the Spanish Transition to democracy. With this purpose in mind, Iturralde recovers in his novel the political project of what the historian Paul Preston has referred as the “third Spain”. Días de llamas, following the schema of the historical novel, connects the just born Spanish democracy of the 70’s, with the liberal base of the second Spanish Republic, trying to solve the historical discontinuity between the first one with the just finished Franquism.