The Censorship Files: Latin American Writers and Franco's Spain

2. The Writer in the Barracks: Mario Vargas Llosa Facing Censorship

Chapter 2 ____________________________ The Writer in the Barracks Mario Vargas Llosa Facing Censorship A1973 photograph of Mario Vargas Llosa’s book signing at Barcelona’s El Corte Inglés, Spain’s largest chain of department stores, can serve to epitomize his literary career in Spain under the Franco regime. In the photograph, the writer sits pensively at a desk next to a sign showing the triangular emblem of El Corte Inglés and announcing that “Mario Vargas Llosa will sign copies of his latest novel Pantaleón y las visitadoras [Captain Pantoja and the Special Service] from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., and 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.” (Setti 66). From being an unknown Peruvian writer the decade before, Vargas Llosa now faced long hours amidst a crowd of shoppers in this major book signing event. Pantaleón y las visitadoras came to these shoppers as a book of “great literary quality” that was being sold as yet another product endorsed by El Corte Inglés’s slogan of “guaranteed quality,” which had made this multilevel department store a popular shopping center and a symbol of Spain’s economic prosperity in the apertura years. The photograph also illustrates how Vargas Llosa “made it” in the Spanish literary market, and how this market presented acclaimed or recognized authors. The image of Vargas Llosa at El Corte Inglés’ bookshop also suggests that the Spanish literary market was to be “made” thanks to authors like him who were willing not only to endure promotional events at crowded and unpleasant department stores, but also arduous negotiations with the Spanish censorship 37 authorities and publishing houses like Seix Barral.1 Perhaps that was a small sacrifice for Vargas Llosa whose novels, despite the censors’ misgivings and objections, were published and aggressively promoted in Franco’s Spain. Vargas Llosa’s successful career under the regime coincided with the government’s overhaul of the publishing industry and with the new publishing and marketing trends of Seix Barral, which in 1963 was about to become a sort of a launching pad for many Latin American authors. As we have seen (chapter 1), these new trends were launched by the savvy Carlos Barral, Vargas Llosa’s most fervent defender in his dealings with the Spanish censorship authorities as well as on the editorial board of Seix Barral. An important factor in the authorities’ decision to allow Seix Barral to publish Vargas Llosa’s “obscene” and “immoral” novels, as the censorship files describe them, was their commercial success. That was indeed one of the most convincing arguments used by Barral, and certainly one that the censors also kept in mind in their evaluations. Vargas Llosa’s commercial success was due not only to Seix Barral’s efforts, but also, in part, to the Barcelona-based book club Círculo de Lectores [The Readers’ Circle]. Círculo reached its popularity in Spain in the mid-1960s and 1970s, and has remained a successful book club ever since, thanks nowadays to its web site (www.circulo.es). Club members paid a small annual subscription fee to purchase books at a discount rate. Vargas Llosa’s works and those of his fellow Latin American writers became top best sellers in the 1970s. Círculo often reprinted Seix Barral’s editions in larger runs for its club members. Such was the case with Círculo reprints of Vargas Llosa’s La ciudad y los perros (1969, 1972, and two editions in 1973), La casa verde (1969) [The Green House], Conversación en la catedral (1973), and Pantaleón y las visitadoras (1974, 1977). Through Círculo many Spanish households, mine being no exception, saw for the first time Latin American novels delivered to their homes. Círculo was inspired by foreign clubs like the U.S. Book-of-the-Month Club of the 1950s, which Janice Radway sees as responsible for the dissemination of middlebrow books and for the ensuing “sentimental education” such books offer (1–17). But before Vargas Llosa’s novels reached Círculo, Barral had aggressively launched Vargas Llosa on the worldwide book market with the publication of the 1962 Biblioteca Breve Prize winner La ciudad y los perros.2 The novel came out in 1963 and rapidly became an international success. By the early 1970s, there had been sixteen editions in Spanish and translations into twenty different languages. For Carlos Barral the success of La ciudad y los perros was quite...