Criticism of Spain's Transition to Democracy Reflected in the Detective Fiction of Eduardo Mendoza

Abstract

The early years of Spain's transition to a democracy after Francisco Franco's death in 1975 saw the production of a large number of detective novels that differed markedly from the general expectations for such works. Eduardo Mendoza (Barcelona 1945) has produced five novels that serve as paradigms of the genre: El misterio de la cripta embrujada [The Mystery of the Bewitched Crypt] (1979), El laberinto de las aceitunas [The Laberynth of Olives] (1982), La aventura del tocador de señoras y la vida [The Entanglement of Purse and Life] (2012), and El secreto de la modelo extraviada [The Secret of the Misplaced Model] (2015). The same detective —resident of an insane asylum whom the police have let out to help solve difficult cases— is the protagonist of all five works. With his crazy detective —connected to key literary protagonists who appeared at moments of great social change—, outlandish "cases" and solutions which solve nothing, Mendoza frustrates the expectations of this genre to denounce the traditional powers of Spain and the lack of progress toward a fairer society during the first decades of the democracy and into the twenty-first century.