Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

Telling Tales Of War To Teens: Ignacio Martínez De Pisón's Una Guerra Africana And Morocco As "Open Wound" In The Spanish National Imaginary , Silvia Bermúdez

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Exactly ten years after its traumatic defeat in the Spanish-American War of 1898, Spain appeared to find some compensation for the loss of its last colonies by undertaking the invasion of Morocco in 1908. The enterprise proved difficult when the forces of Abd-el-Krim defeated the Spanish army in the summer of 1921. This terrible loss was metaphorized as an "open wound" and entered the collective imagination by becoming a theme in novels such as José Díaz Fernández's El blocao (1928), Ramón Sender's Imán (1930), and Arturo Barea's series La forja de un rebelde (1941-1944). Known as the "Disaster of Annual," …