Quiroga, Elena

b. 1921, Santander; d. 1995, La Coruña

   Writer

   One of several major women novelists to emerge in the early postwar period, Elena Quiroga gained national recognition when her second novel, Viento del norte (North Wind), was awarded the Nadal Prize for 1950. Although atypical of her work, it is still Quiroga's most widely read novel and one that also gained popularity as a film. The action takes place in rural Galicia and is written in a traditional novelistic structure, with an omniscient third-person narrator. Despite her birth in Santander, Quiroga always identified herself with Galicia, her father's region. She married historian Dalmiro de la Válgoma in 1950; the couple moved to Madrid but spent summers in Galicia. Viento del norte marked the beginning of a fifteenyear period of great literary productivity; the publication of eight full-length and three short novels culminated in two fictional autobiographies: Tristura (Sadness), winner of the national Critics" Prize in 1960, and Escribo tu nombre (I Write Your Name) (1965), chosen in 1967 to represent Spain in the international Rómulo Gallegos novel contest. Her final novel, Presente profundo (Deep Present) appeared in 1973, and her election to the Spanish Royal Academy of Language in 1983 doubtless came as a surprise to some because of growing silences between works (see also Royal Academies).

   Her novels from the mid-1950s were increasingly experimental and Faulknerian, in opposition to Spain's dominant current of social realism. Algo pasa en la calle (Something's Happening in the Street) (1954) and La careta (The Mask) (1955) utilized such strategies as stream-of-consciousness, multiple perspectives and temporal fluidity. Their inaccessibility to many readers facilitated her treatment of subjects generally prohibited by official censorship: divorce, sexuality, wartime atrocities, and post-war political retribution and moral degeneracy. La última corrida (The Last Bullfight) (1958) is a rare and much acclaimed novelistic examination of the inner world of bullfighters. Given its linear structure, Tristura appears deceptively simple but in fact requires a sophisticated reader, capable of filling in gaps and silences. The perspective is that of a young child who provides only the information known to her and who is unable to communicate, even to herself, the loss she feels from the absence of love. By her adolescent years in the sequel novel, Escribo tu nombre, Tadea has become rebellious; the name she wishes to write is that of Liberty.

   Quiroga's final novel, Presente profundo, returns to the complex, multiple-perspective structure of Algo pasa en la calle and, like La careta, is related to existential psychiatry in its approach to time. In dealing with society in the early 1970s, Quiroga explores marital, parent-child, and love relationships, developing both traditional and non-traditional female characters; the action shifts between Galicia and cosmopolitan Madrid, providing a full view of contemporary Spain.

   Further reading

   - Zatlin-Boring, P. (1977) Elena Quiroga, Boston, MA: G.K.Hall (the only book-length study.)

   - Zatlin, P. (1991) "Writing against the Current: The Novels of Elena Quiroga", in J.L.Brown (ed.) Women Writers of Contemporary Spain. Exiles in the Homeland, Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, pp. 42–58 (upto- date overview of complete works).

   PHYLLIS ZATLIN