Barcelona, 1920s - a city racked by a tsunami of radical and bloody events that led to a confrontation between those citizens without rights - the working classes -and the bourgeoise, who after profitting greatly during the first world war at the expense of the labouring classes, were now determined to protect their own interests at any cost and were hell-bent on crushing the lower classes, using whatever weapons or institutions they could.
Unionism took hold in the previous decade, and a series of rolling strikes by workers would culminate in the La Canadiense strike of 1919 - a general strike involving the entire population of the city, lasting the biblical forty days, in which the workers demanded better working conditions. It was only a decade since the events of Tragic Week when workers rose up, buildings were destroyed and 150 were reportedly killed, and more than 1,700 individuals were indicted in military courts for "armed rebellion". Events still very much prevalent in the minds of Barcelona's citizens.
The working class, the industrial class, and the military were united together in the hope of removing the corrupt central government, but were unsuccessful. Fears of communism grew. A military coup brought Miguel Primo de Rivera to power in 1923, and he ran Spain as a military dictatorship. Anarchism became popular among the working class, and was far stronger in Spain than anywhere else in Europe at the time
As support for his regime gradually faded, Primo de Rivera resigned in January 1930. There was little support for the monarchy in the major cities, and King Alfonso XIII abdicated; the Second Spanish Republic was formed, whose power would remain until the culmination of the Spanish Civil War.
Barcelona Heiress is said to be based on real-life events that occurred during this time, and from the notes left by the author's grandfather (on whom I could find no information - I would have been interested to know who the author's grandfather was and what his role was in all of this).
The fictional narrative is from the perspective of Pablo Vilar, a journalist and lawyer, and man with connections to a diverse group of people that stretches across a vast area of the social strata (a bit like the infamous Inocencio Feced - a sinister figure from the 1920s; a man on familiar terms with all sorts of people in Barcelona ranging from the police chief Arlegui to the Libre’s president, Ramón Sales, as well as the Libertarian Movement and, naturally, the city’s underworld.)
There is also the parallel story of a vigilante who provides justice when the courts didn't. At the height of civil unrest in Barcelona. business owners hired assassins to infiltrate workers organisations and to murder troublesome union leaders; newspapers and their staff were targetted, as were lawyers defending unionists. The nobility, politicians, police, and church were not exempt from the violence and assassinations. Repression would be harsh and very one-sided.
The author assumes the readers' familiarity with the subject matter as a given. Had the author provided a short background to this story, then the fictional narrative would have made more sense. As it was, the execution was lacking as there was no real connection between narratives - it comes off as a disjointed attempt to recreate the glitz and glamour of the Gatsby era with the setting in Barcelona.
Side note: the author's father, the writer and historian José Luis Vila-San-Juan wrote 'The daily life in Spain under the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera'.
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