A group of students from the University of Madrid planned an attack on the rectorate during the state of emergency in 1969. Of different origins and characters, but united by a naive idealism, almost to the limit of the absurd; and above all, because of their opposition to the dictatorship, these university students aspire to live in a free country.
This plot of the novel wet gunpowder (Drácena) served its author, Andrés Berlanga (Labros, Guadalajara, 1941 – Madrid, 2018), to demystify these student protests that in reality only concerned a minority. Published in 1972 and then retouched by censorship, the recent edition appears in its entirety and with a documentary appendix that traces a lucid timeline of the atmosphere of the time and also of the language of university students.
“Andrés Berlanga was an important author,” says Drácena editor Gastón Segura, “even if he is not much considered, perhaps because of the brevity of his work. But there is no doubt that this novel and The gaznapira, from 1984, represent two magnificent exercises in capturing the speech, the language, of different social groups. In the case of wet gunpowder, A novel heavily based on dialogue, it masterfully reflects the way students of the late sixties spoke and communicated. As for The gaznapira We find a brilliant use of the language of the region of Molina de Aragón. For all this, we think that Berlanga is a writer to be justified.
A journalist by training, professor at the School of Journalism and director of communications at the Juan March Foundation for four decades, Andrés Berlanga has not focused on literature. The author of the prologue to wet gunpowder, Soledad Alcaide points out that “literature was rather a sporadic lover.” “Five years separate his first published work, a collection of stories under the title Barrunto from the novel “Wet gunpowder”adds this journalist, defender of the reader of El País and goddaughter of Berlanga.
It would then take another 12 years to publish The gaznapira, which is considered by many specialists as one of the best Spanish novels of the second half of the last century. In fact, for many critics The gaznapira It prefigures the story of the abandonment of rural Spain and the exodus to the cities. “I sincerely believe,” Alcaide comments, “that Berlanga was a language specialist, a writer who acted essentially as a word sniffer. In his novels and stories, language is very present as the legacy of a territory or a generation.
Andrés Berlanga rejected during his lifetime that wet gunpowder has been reissued, despite the insistence of the publishing house Drácena. However, half jokingly, half seriously, he promised the publisher Gastón Segura that he would leave him the novel in his will. That is why, six years after the writer’s death, the novel is being published next September. “He was very affected by the death of his wife, the writer Enriqueta Antolín,” Segura explains, “and once he retired, he did not want to change his daily life or reawaken memories. Maybe that’s why I didn’t want to see a reissue.”
The editor explains that he compared the entire text with the previous version and that in the new version there are detailed citations of the changes imposed by censorship, such as references to the police. However, the most revealing contribution is found in the texts, brochures, press releases and communications generated by the events of this state of exception in 1969 at the University of Madrid. The Franco regime adopted this extreme measure, applied throughout Spain, to repress student demonstrations.
Absurd and crazy actions
Segura does not hesitate to describe as “Marxist scholastic vocabulary” the language of student groups opposed to Franco, such as the Democratic Union of Students or various communist parties. This appendix also includes notes from university authorities prohibiting gatherings, the entry of outsiders into the faculties or the posting of posters or advertisements, while warning of the presence of the police or threatening academic records.
Seen from a distance, half a century has passed, the characters of wet gunpowder, Boys and girls, they inspire a mixture of disenchantment and tenderness, whether in their political activism or in their relationships. The author of the prologue Soledad Alcaide defines the spirit of the novel well when she says: “It is a story in a humble, poor and backward Spain, but where the melody of democracy already resounds. When Andrés published this book in 1972, he was just over thirty. He had not yet started a family and was closer to the young university students he describes in the book than to the generation in power that still supported the dictator Francisco Franco.”
wet gunpowder It takes place in an era marked by the May 1968 uprisings in France, the Vietnam War, the victory of Salvador Allende’s left in Chile and the crushing of the Prague Spring by the Soviet Union. The aspiring journalist Loren, the intern Paco, the chic Güili or the girls Laura and Chon, among others, feed on these influences, among others, in a naive attempt to blow up the faculty with a bomb.
“Of course,” Segura says, “they are planning an absurd and crazy attack. They are young people dazzled by Marxist ideology, but totally short-sighted in the face of the reality that surrounds them. They consider the working class, which they mythologize, to be deformed because at that time the vast majority of workers and the middle class aspired to buy a Seat 600 and a small apartment on the beach.
Making a revolution was not at all part of his life plans. One of the great attractions of this novel, besides the obsession with the care of language, aims to demystify the magnitude of the student protests. The cruelty of the repression is real, with serious events such as the murder of the student Enrique Ruano by the police. Now, except in the big universities, like Madrid and Barcelona, the state of exception of 1969 has gone unnoticed by the vast majority of the population.
