La guerra carlista

In 1872 Carlos de Borbón y Austria-Este, called Carlos VII by his followers, entered Spain to lead the rebellious parties against King Amadeo of Savoy, beginning the third Carlist war. Although the raid was a failure, the proclamation of the First Republic in 1873 gave wings to his supporters and the conflict spread throughout the north of the peninsula; It did not end until 1876 with the victory of the troops of the new King Alfonso XII. Between 1908 and 1910 Valle-Inclán, from a Carlist family and defender of "the Cause", dedicated to it three short novels -Los cruzados de la causa, El resplandor de la guerra and Gyrfalcons of yesteryear- and two stories -A gathering of yesteryear and La corte de Estella- where he wanted to represent the war in all its complexity, starting from the prominence of the people. With formidable documentation, he mixed historical and fictitious characters who, sometimes "wolves", sometimes "children", exude "the naive and barbaric fragrance of a song of deed": fanatical or cautious guerrillas, loyal or indolent soldiers, noblemen in decadence, heroic beggars... The course of the war, irreducible to a conventional chronological line, is reflected through a narrative that tries a new and modern -almost avant-garde- epic form, based on the multiple and fragmentary and alien to all conclusion. Read today, the cycle of The Carlist War, which we present here in a new edition by Ignacio Echevarría, is revealing because it also offers a historical picture of traditionalist Spain that reaches our days.