Montserrat Roig and the Thread of Historiography: From Els catalans als camps nazis to L'hora violeta

The publication of Montserrat Roig's Els catalans als camps nazis in 1977 marks a turning point for the inclusion of representations of Catalan experience in Spain's 'official' history. Three years later, the author faces a similar challenge in her novel L'hora violeta, seizing the opportunity to weave subject matter and thematic strands from her historiographical study into the narrative thread of her fictional text. The result of this intermingling is an intertextual approximation to Catalan history, a collective story told through individual testimony, and a self-conscious exploration of the author's personal grappling with the convergence of history and fiction. These two texts, rarely analysed together, demonstrate the profound impact Roig has had on the re-imagining of a Catalan identity in post-Franco Spain.