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Contemporary Spanish fictional representations of ethno-religious convivencia in Medieval Iberia: César Vidal’s medievalizing novels

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Abstract

Historical fiction has been a boom genre in Spanish publishing for many years. One of the most popular periods represented in such novels is the late medieval period, that is, the later centuries of the Christian Reconquest leading up to the momentous events of 1492. The attraction that this period holds for Spanish writers of historical novels has been attributed by critics to a fascination with convivencia, the often idealized coexistence of three religious and ethnic groups – Christian, Muslim and Jewish – whether in the Christian kingdoms of the Peninsula or the Muslim-ruled al-Andalus. Historical fiction often tells us more about the present than the past, revealing the historical background of present-day conflicts, for example, or hinting at parallels between past and present. Within such a framework, this essay explores the intersection between the preoccupations of contemporary Spain and the work of one author of such historical fiction, César Vidal.

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Notes

  1. For example, Vidal published a satirical book about the Socialist government of President Rodríguez Zapatero in 2008, La Ezpaña de ZP (Vidal, 2008).

  2. Some years Vidal seems to have produced eight or nine books of different types. García Landa’s webpage states that Vidal is ‘strongly suspected of using ghost writers,’ presumably on the basis of the sheer number of texts that are produced under his name each year (García Landa, 2015). Furthermore, the rigor and objectivity of some of his historical research, especially in relation to the Spanish Civil War, has been called into question by Ian Gibson and others (Rojo, 2005).

  3. It is very difficult to get a complete bibliography of Vidal’s work even from his own website. These figures include novels and works of non-fiction as listed on www.cesarvidal.com.

  4. All translations from Spanish in this essay are my own.

  5. Henceforth I will use the Spanish versions of their names, Isabel and Fernando, as these are the names used in the novel.

  6. ‘This,’ of course, refers to the 800-year-long war of Reconquest.

  7. See, for example, the articles in El País by Rojo (2007) and Irujo (2007) which are but two of the many that picked up these references to al-Andalus. The latter article includes graphics collated by the Spanish Police regarding the frequency of such comments and quotations.

  8. According to a note on the title page of El médico de Sefarad, the publication of the first of these novels coincided with the 800th anniversary of the death of Maimonides and the proclamation by the Israeli Parliament of the Year of Maimonides.

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  1. Spanish and Latin American Studies Program, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

    Nicola Gilmour

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Gilmour, N. Contemporary Spanish fictional representations of ethno-religious convivencia in Medieval Iberia: César Vidal’s medievalizing novels. Postmedieval 7, 257–272 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/pmed.2016.11

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