Luis García Jambrina (Zamora, 1960) had already turned Fernando de Rojas, the author of La Celestina, into a surprising researcher and now he repeats the operation with The First Case of Unamuno (Alfaguara), in which the intellectual tries to solve a series of crimes in the context of poverty generated by the liberal agrarian reform. A reform that for the author, a professor at the same University of Salamanca where Unamuno was rector, more than the emptied Spain, created “the hopeless Spain.”
Why Unamuno?
Above all, he was a great character that he had built himself through his works and through his life. I thought about writing a novel in Paris, during the time he was exiled, that would be the subject of a plot to assassinate him. It was based on indications that some Italian fascists wanted to do it. But I turned it around: what if, instead of being the target of an assassination attempt, he was an investigator? And so we arrived at this series, because it was impossible to exhaust the character in one work.
What do Unamuno and his thoughts contribute to a detective?
It seemed natural to me that a person who was always dedicated to seeking the truth and telling it, no matter what happened and whatever it cost him, given certain circumstances, would investigate crimes, because he was also interested in everything. He found himself involved in situations that had to do with some crimes, they always tried to involve him in campaigns to support people who were unjustly detained or who had been harassed or were going to be executed. I was attracted by his observant nature, necessary for a good detective, a bit in the manner of the 19th century that culminated with the figure of Holmes. But I try to open it to other elements, not just reason. I call him a walking detective. Because he totally identified with Don Quixote: going out to right wrongs, confronting whoever he had to face, suffering the consequences as Don Quixote suffered them, as he suffered them until the end of his life. His confrontation with Millán Astray cannot be understood except from that perspective. And I think that’s what leads to his death.
In fact, in the novel he says that science is not useful to unravel the meaning of existence.
That evolution occurred in his thinking and his life. He, who had been a great defender of progress and science, of socialist ideas, and believed that with this society could be improved, stopped believing it, had a crisis in 1897 and opened his position to more irrational positions, recovered religiosity, transcendence. He tried to harmonize reason and emotion, feeling and thought.
In the novel, the symptom of the time is the real case of the people of Boada, who wrote to the Argentine president to all go to their country and escape poverty.
The one who stirred everything up in this case was Unamuno, in response to an article by Ramiro de Maeztu, who accused the people of being unpatriotic. After reading to him, Unamuno goes to Boada, with a thousand inhabitants. Today it does not reach 300. With the agrarian reform, in that area the lands passed into the hands of a few. And they turned them into large pastures for cattle. There was no room for farmers. For Unamuno, the liberal agrarian reform of the 19th century was catastrophic. And he said that the government that allowed communal lands or landowners who only sought profit was unpatriotic. Starting with the Boada case, with more intellectuals, he began agrarian campaigns, they went to the towns to talk. He was so active that it is likely that it cost him the rectorship.
