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On 14 April 1931, two days after the
Spanish local elections that led to king Alfonso XIII going into exile and a few hours before the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic in Madrid, MaciĂ proclaimed the Catalan Republic within an Iberian Federation. However, three days later, the government
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of the new
Spanish Republic sent three ministers to Barcelona to negotiate with MaciĂ and the Catalan provisional government. MaciĂ reached an agreement with the ministers, by which the Catalan Republic was renamed Generalitat of Catalonia, an autonomous government within the Spanish Republic.
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Beyond the very real and crucial ideological divisions of the Civil War (fascism vs democracy, right vs leftâŚ) the reality on the ground was more complex. While the
Catholic church hierarchy was almost unanimously pro-Franco, many Catholics fought for the Spanish Republic and for Catalan
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Divided into three parts, the novel is narrated by three of the characters, with changing perspectives and time frames. A fourth part set in the devastated landscape of
Barcelona and Catalonia under the Franco dictatorship is now published as a separate novel,
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Love and friendship. Trini reacts to SolarĂ sâs offer of marriage: "I feel your suggestion is absurd because of the very things I admire in you. You are too intelligent and love is a jungle. A couple of wild animals howling on the edge of a
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anti-hero, half-philosopher, half-cynic, who fascinates the other three with his crazed lucidity. SolerĂ s serves with the
Republican forces but regularly makes forays across the lines. He too is in love with Trini and even offers to marry
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and the censor accordingly authorised its publication, albeit with major cuts. Sales continued writing and adding to the text until the definitive fourth edition in 1971, by which time it had become a much longer and more complex novel.
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The false security of youth and the loss of oneâs youthful illusions. "It was the glory of an April day we didnât anticipate would be so uncertain: whoâd have thought that explosion of joy would end five years later in the most absurd
128:"A moment comes in life when you feel that you are waking from a dream. Our youth is behind us âŚâŚ perhaps youth has never been anything but a gloomy storm streaked by lightning flashes of glory, of uncertain glory, on an April day".
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Spain. He initially tried to have it published in 1955, but it was rejected by the
Francoist censors because it "expressed heretical ideas often in disgusting and obscene language". However, in 1956 it was given the
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Trini
Milmany, the daughter of utopian anarchists, a geologist and LluĂsâs partner. She remains in Barcelona to care for their child, born outside marriage. Increasingly estranged from LluĂs, Trini turns to the
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Goytisolo was instrumental in publishing an uncensored, but incomplete, French translation in 1962. The positive reviews of the novel in France led to Salesâs
Spanish passport being withdrawn.
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Juli SolerĂ s, a friend of Trini and LluĂs from their student days, when they were all drawn to anarchism. In many ways he is the central character of the novel, an enigmatic and provocative
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Salesâ novel narrates the experiences of four young
Catalans, both at the front and at the rearguard, from that "uncertain glory on an April day" to the chaotic and tragic collapse of the
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Faith, and the loss of faith, in the face of the absurdity of life. "We who donât have any faith wish we did, but the contrary âŚ. to have faith and wish we didnât would be absurd."
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points out in his foreword, Sales "does not root his thinking in certainties but rather in lives exposed to the worldâs absurdity, its procession of blood, death and injustice".
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front, which had been collectivised by the anarchists but now abandoned by them. He becomes infatuated with the lady of the castle in the village.
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Cruells, who had been studying for the priesthood, but now serves a medical adjutant on the front. His love for Trini remains unrequited.
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Humanityâs existential search for meaning in the face of absurdity and the mystery of life and death, "the macabre and the obscene".
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side. The novel portrays the war in all its brutal complexity and offers no obvious partisan message. As
Spanish writer
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LluĂs de Broca, a well-to-do lawyer, who is now a Republican officer. He is initially posted to take charge of
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made a much-acclaimed translation of the novel into English. It was selected by the
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On one level, the title refers to the enthusiasm raised by the declaration of a
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Sales began writing the novel in 1948 at the age of thirty-six on his return to
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Interwoven in the novel are a number of themes, from the political to the
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568:, founded by the veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. (In English)
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517:"Uncertain Glory review - Catalan classic of the Spanish Civil War"
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383:"El pensament fermat de Joan Sales (interview from 1980)"
329:. MacLehose Press. pp. Foreword by Juan Goytisolo.
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magazine as one of the ten best novels that same year.
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in 2014. (Video in English with subtitles in Catalan)
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church and attends clandestine masses in city attics.
540:of Uncertain Glory at the British Library with
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106:Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
140:front in 1938, which was to lead to the
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109:And by and by a cloud takes all away!"
100:"O, how this spring of love resembleth
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103:The uncertain glory of an April day,
71:(ânothing stands in the wayâ) by the
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496:Battersby, Eileen (November 2014).
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438:. pp. Part three, chapter I.
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62:after nine years of exile from
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381:Ibarz, Mercè (20 March 2017).
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44:Republican
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