Chon Recalde’s wedding

Original language: castellano

Year of publication: 1995

Valuation: Alright

I believe that the work of Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, which I partially know, has important fluctuations, especially with regard to the degree of experimentation and the risk and power of his arguments. Specifically, I think there is a significant change since he began publishing in a very famous publishing house back in the late 80s. It may be a prejudice on my part, and it may also be that someone could refute me by citing works that I do not know, but I’m afraid that around that time Don Gonzalo slowed down a lot or quite a bit in his creative impetus, and dedicated himself to creating rather conventional stories with which any average citizen could be entertained without complications and without being bothered by issues of substance or form.

What happens is that Torrente continues to write wonderfully, and is capable of not losing level whether he is looking for difficult paths or letting himself be carried away by less risky terrain. Then we find stories with more conventional features that perhaps do not excite as much but that shine in another way thanks to the magic of the author. That is where this novel moves, in which we are located in a small Galician town where the aristocracy is not linked to titles of nobility but to ranks of the Navy officers, a point in which some of the creativity that may be emerging may be emerging. Torrente refuses to give up completely.

A few years after the end of the Civil War, the two daughters of a Republican admiral, a prestigious expert in naval warfare, returned to the town, who was shot in unclear circumstances for having questioned the German victory. In general, people continue to value the deceased’s belonging to the military elite more than his detachment from the Regime, which is why his family continues to enjoy the majority’s respect, but there are always exceptions. And there is also, as in other places and times, a struggle to climb the social ladder, in which two young people of good looks and of marriageable age are a competition that some families cannot tolerate.

Because this is a society in which marrying a daughter well is a priority, and in that unique environment, marrying her well means finding her a boyfriend with ancestry at the top of the maritime-military ranks. So the plot develops as any after-dinner series might do in The 1: loves and heartbreaks with young officers, mothers who maneuver to favor their daughters, envy and quarrels related to the peculiar social segmentation, silent suitors, brothers with somewhat broader views who consider fleeing from that palette society.

Indeed, a slightly deeper reading is also possible that would touch on topics such as the painful role of women, predestined to search for a good match, or the persistence of rejection towards the losers of the still recent war. In short, a critical background that we could consider as politically correct, explicit but not bloody, acceptable to the reader towards whom I understand the book is directed. I have even wanted to see a hint of daring and fantasy in that social stratification based on naval merits.

Everything is very soft, easily digestible and moderately entertaining. But, of course, coming from the hand of Torrente Ballester, everything is so well narrated, so perfectly dosed, with that pinch of irony and balanced, pleasant and elegant prose, which largely compensates for the mellifluous nature of the story. It seems that reading this author is always a rewarding experience, even if he was writing the Accounting Plan or the shopping list. The pity is that, at least on this occasion, in one of his last works, he had not decided to put that enormous talent at the service of something a little braver.