Spain is different?: historical memory and the 'two spains' in turn-of-the-millennium spanish apocalyptic fictions

The end of the second millennium witnessed an increase in science-fictional apocalyptic narratives globally. There is a noteworthy difference between such fictions from Latin America and the anglophone world and those from Spain, in which scientific explanations of events coexist with biblically-inspired plots, characters and imagery. This is the first book-length study of either science-fictional novels or apocalyptic literature in that country, analysing six such works between 1990 and 2005. Within a theoretical framework that includes critical and genre theories, archetypal criticism, and biblical scholarship, the book explains this phenomenon as a result of three historical factors: the ‘Two Spains’, Spanish ‘difference’, and the ‘Pact of Silence’, a tacit agreement that made justice and accountability impossible in the name of a peaceful transition to democracy. It repressed any processing of the historical trauma experienced during the Civil War and dictatorship, trauma that manifests itself symbolically in these fictions. This study explains the apparently paradoxical coexistence of scientific and religious world views in Spanish apocalyptic fictions from 1990-2005 as a result of the traditional conflict between conservative and liberal Spain, Spanish exceptionalism, and the lack of reckoning for crimes committed during the Civil War and dictatorship during Spain's transition to democracy, before contextualising these fictions globally