‘The vault of the memories’ by Carlos Alonso Sainz.

I like the expression of “this is no other story about the civil war” when we refer to the novel of Carlos Alonso Sainz, The vault of memories.

This work tells the story of a forgotten hero of the Spanish civil war whose adventures lead him to cross borders and witness the dark side of humanity. However, remember that It is not a story about war. So what is? The reader can intuit that perhaps the damage of the same, an encounter with the refugees who try to rebuild their life, a memory that has been broken and a tribute.

Memory He has an important role in both The vault of memories as in the life of Carlos Alonso. The author feels that boomers We are the last generation that will receive, directly, the testimony of those who lived the Spanish Civil War and that, then, will only get stories of stories. We therefore have a responsibility. And, although Carlos has tried with this work to move away from a simplistic story, of good and bad, he has expressed in various interviews that this book does have a side: that of The losers. Although I don’t think he refers only to political losers, but to the people he suffered.

Returning to the thread of the beginning, in this story the war appears. Carlos Alonso focuses especially on The scenario of a defeat and the principle of exile. You want to focus on the characters, not on the context. In fact, a parallel argument reaches 2023, where a woman realizes that she also has an open wound shared.

With all this, we have a skein of events that give rise to a very well open and very well closed story. A perfect circle. I hope the wounds, some of them exposed in Labor of Carlos Alonso Sainzthey could also conclude.

(To expand) You can read the interview I conducted the writer in Culturamas.