Black Bread

Black Bread (Catalan: Pa negre) is a semi-autobiographical novel published by the Catalan pedagogue, journalist and writer, Emili Teixidor i Viladecàs in 2003, when the author was seventy years old, it describes the coming of age of a young boy in the repressive aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in rural Catalonia. Title The book’s title refers to the dark bread rationed to the poor in Spain during the 1940s, the “hungry years”. It is a metaphor for the post-Civil War period marked by widespread poverty, a thriving black market, and the ongoing repression of the Franco regime. Synopsis The narrator, eleven-year-old Andreu, whose father is a political prisoner and whose mother is a factory worker, is sent to live with tenant farmer relatives in rural Catalonia after the war. He settles into a seemingly idyllic rural life with his young cousins, observing the adult world from the vantage of a plum tree. However, the miseries of Catalonia under fascist domination begin to encroach upon this idyll. We learn that Andreu’s father is facing a death sentence for his political activities, his mother, after working long hours in the factory, is desperately lobbying local bigwigs to obtain his release, Andreu’s cousin’s parents have been forced to seek exile in France and that the large family in the farmhouse is viewed with suspicion by the local Francoist authorities and the Civil Guard. The survival of the family entails subterfuge and secrecy. Andreu and his cousins struggle to understand the language charged with double meanings that the adults of the family use when discussing their secrets, the “language of gestures, grimaces, exclamations, hints and half-words”. The children have their own secret world as they roam through the woods, catching sight of lovers, thieves and a woman who went mad after her boyfriend had been executed in front of her and now runs naked between the trees. At the same time, they also become very aware of their own awakening sexuality.