Compulsory reading
El expediente Barcelona
Francisco González Ledesma
La Factoría de Ideas • 2006
(1 st edition, 1983) • 320 pages
Javier Sánchez Zapatero
Translation: Jean Burrell
The
publishing house 'La Factoría de Ideas' has succeeded
in becoming one of the most widely available in the crime novel genre
thanks to a dual strategy that comprises, on one hand, publishing
in Spanish the most recent books from the Anglo-American range and,
on the other, reviving great classics of the Spanish crime novel
that have appeared since the end of the Franco era. Andreu Martín,
Mariano Sánchez y Soler and Francisco González Ledesma
have been some of the authors whose work has benefited from revision
by the publisher, and this has meant that readers have been able
to encounter out-of-print titles which are now only available in
secondhand bookshops or collectors' book fairs. In the case of González
Ledesma – whose Las calles de nuestros padres was also
reissued recently – that return to the foreground of the publishing
scene is tremendously necessary since, despite the prestige he enjoys
among Spanish readers and the group of authors specializing in crime
novels, he has suddenly suffered ostracism on the part of publishers,
so much so that until just over two years ago his first books written
after the Franco period were practically impossible to find. Considering
that during Franco's rule Ledesma also suffered the rigours of censorship
and his work as a writer was reduced to the prolific writing of paperbacks
(more than 700 titles) under the pen-name Silver Kane, it seems just
that the Barcelona writer's books should be re-issued, as he did
not deserve to suffer another unfair censorship – of oblivion and
lack of interest - in the midst of a period of freedom and democracy.
Still it is not only out of justice that we should applaud the re-issue
of El expediente Barcelona, but also because
with ‘ La
Factoría de Ideas' initiative readers can at last get to know
a text of quality and literary value.
El expediente Barcelona,
originally published by Júcar
in 1983, brought the first appearance of Méndez, the ambiguous,
sceptical police officer created by González Ledesma who would
be the chief character in most of his subsequent crime writing. In
the few passages in the novel where he appears there are already
forcefully apparent the main elements that their author would develop
as time went on. Apart from Méndez, the other element prominent
in Ledesma's work is already present in the book: Barcelona . The
streets of the Catalan city are the stage on which the whole novel
is played out, introducing too the author's usual taste for creating
characters from the press and legal worlds in which the writer moved
in his professional life.
The whole novel presents
an atmosphere of disenchantment similar to the one to be found
in other authors such as Manuel Vázquez
Montalbán, Andreu Martín or Juan Madrid. With its sceptical,
critical character the book shows the frustration of a whole generation
with the social, political and economic changes brought about since
the dictator's death and with the realization of the failure of all
the utopian idealism that surrounded the early years of political
change, personified by the treatment of the main female character.
Together with this disappointment, the book seems to be dominated
by a continual turning back to the past, as if only in memory (though
of course not in the memory of Franco's rule but in that of the period
when the ideals and banners still had some meaning) could the author
find consolation when faced with the frustrating future of Spanish
society after Franco's death. The importance of memory is foregrounded
through the constant connection between the events treated in the
novel and a past that explains them and gives meaning, thus pointing
up the fact that every crime novel and every investigation is almost
always a reconstruction of the past.
