The Sovereign and the Saint: Francisco Ayala’s Critique of the Baroque in Context

The aim of this article is to place Francisco Ayala's collection of short stories Los usurpadores (1944) in a context of interpretation that brings to light its juridico-political underpinning. This context is a sociological field of speculation where the critique of the baroque championed by Walter Benjamin, T. S. Eliot, and Ayala unfolds under the auspices of the German jurist Carl Schmitt. By focusing on the role of community, sovereignty, emergency, and decision in stories like “San Juan de Dios” and “El hechizado,” this article establishes a new connection between Ayala's fiction, his political theory, and his reading of Spanish baroque writers like Saavedra Fajardo, Cervantes, Calderón, and Quevedo. This connection reveals both the rationalism and the sustained anti-essentialism that shape Ayala's literary and critical production.