[2] It is a metaphor for the post-Civil War period marked by widespread poverty, a thriving black market, and the ongoing repression of the Franco regime.
[3][Notes 2] The narrator, eleven-year-old Andreu, whose father is a political prisoner and whose mother is a factory worker, is sent to live with tenant farmer relatives in rural Catalonia after the war.
We learn that Andreu’s father is facing a death sentence for his political activities, his mother, after working long hours in the factory, is desperately lobbying local bigwigs to obtain his release, Andreu’s cousin’s parents have been forced to seek exile in France and that the large family in the farmhouse is viewed with suspicion by the local Francoist authorities and the Civil Guard.
The children have their own secret world as they roam through the woods, catching sight of lovers, thieves and a woman who went mad after her boyfriend had been executed in front of her and now runs naked between the trees.
Even his uncle, the head of household at the farm, who has never been active politically, is suspect for “sitting on the fence” during the Civil War and not getting involved now in “cleaning up the Fatherhood”.
[5] All this leads to an atmosphere of fear, subterfuge and deception among the family members, which the children seek to decode: “The outside world was divided up between our folk and the others we guessed were enemies.
[7] Following the brutal destruction of Guernica by the Luftwaffe, the hierarchy of the Spanish church expressed support for Franco’s uprising, which they described as an “armed plebiscite”.
Andreu explains: “On Monday when we reached school, the master made us say which mass we’d been to, with whom, what was the colour of the celebrant’s chasuble, what was the sermon about, who’d seen us there.” [8] However, many Catalan[Notes 4] and Basque Catholics gave support to the Republic against the fascists.
[1][Notes 5] She also regales the children at the farmhouse with scary and at times risqué stories.enthrals her grandchildren with stories of goblins who run up and down the stairs to the attic, but this may well provide a cover for the maquis or perhaps smugglers who pass through the house seeking food and shelter on their way to and from France.
However, during the sex play Andreu is puzzled by the images flashing through his mind of the body of a young male tuberculosis patient stretched out on the grass in the garden of the local monastery.
[15] Andreu’s response is a cynical one: “Growing up was all about that: breaking with the past and moving forward, forcefully and not looking back….brutally, if needs be, because that new world was harsh and only accepted the bravest, the most intelligent or wealthiest”.
[16] Andreu leaves the home of the losers of the Civil War and joins the world of its victors, the owners of the farmhouse and its lands, who are now diversifying into industry.