The Last Days of Franco

"The Time of Cherries became an essential book in post-Franco Catalonia. It appeared at a time when there were few images of the culture whose youth had cast off Franco long before 1975. The novel is infused not only with an array of vivid characters but also with a sharply detailed vision of middle-class Barcelona before democracy was restored."

"When Roig portrays characters from the older generation, many of them emotionally and spiritually maimed by the long years of the dictatorship, she is careful to make the gap between them and the new generation complex and ambiguous rather than simple or easy to predict."

"There was, for example, a sexual frankness in the book that came as a relief in a country where many films had been censored or banned for their sexual content."

The Time of Cherries, originally published in Catalan in 1976, depicts Barcelona at a pivotal historical moment just before Franco's death and Spain's transition to democracy. The novel centers on Natàlia, nearly 40 years old, a former student activist who returns to confront her conservative family, old friends, and the stifling political environment she abandoned 12 years earlier. The work became essential in post-Franco Catalonia, offering vivid depictions of middle-class life and featuring sexual frankness unusual for the period. Roig portrays generational tensions with complexity, showing how the dictatorship emotionally and spiritually damaged older characters while depicting younger activists fearlessly and dramatically. The novel's accessibility through cheap paperbacks in Barcelona newspaper kiosks made it widely influential in post-dictatorship Catalan culture.

Read at The Atlantic