In this blog post, using Mahina as a setting, we explore how generational memories and silences shape individual identities and narratives in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, through the narrative structure and main characters of ‘The Polish Cavalry’.
Overview of the Author and Work
Antonio Muñoz Molina is an author who began his career in earnest in the late 1980s and has published a variety of novels. ‘Beatus ille’ (1986), ‘El invierno en Lisboa’ (1987), ‘Other Lives (Las otras vidas)’ (1988), ‘Beltenebros’ (1989), ‘The Polish Horseman (El jinete polaco)’ (1991), and ‘The Master of Secrets (El dueño del secreto)’ (1994), among others, reflecting Spanish society during a period of transition.
In particular, ‘The Polish Horseman’ won the 1991 Planeta Prize, earning recognition for its artistic merit and establishing the author as a leading figure of the new generation in Spanish literature. This work is regarded as representative of a new generation of novels that emerged in the 1990s and beyond, transcending the literary categories of the transitional period.
“The Polish Cavalry” uses a structure that interweaves an individual’s chronological recollections with multiple voices, using major events in modern Spanish history as a backdrop to shed light on both personal memory and collective history simultaneously.
Structure and Narrative Style
The novel centers on the personal stories of the protagonists, Manuel and Nadia, but the narrative is structured within the broader framework of flashbacks to the past. Manuel, a simultaneous interpreter whose profession takes him around the world, reunites as an adult with Nadia—whom he remembers from a midnight encounter during his adolescence—and gradually recovers his lost past and reclaims his identity.
The novel is divided into three parts: Part 1, “The Kingdom of Voices (El reino de las voces)”; Part 2, “The Horseman in the Storm (Jinete en la tormenta)”; and Part 3, “The Polish Horseman (El jinete polaco).” In Part 1, the voices of multiple generations convey collective memory; Part 2 expands on the personal memories of Manuel and Nadia; and in Part 3, history and personal history converge, leading to a conclusion centered on the restoration of identity.
The narrative style functions like a puzzle, piecing together fragments of an event and memories through the testimonies, repetitions, elaborations, and enumerations of various characters. This technique reveals how history (collective memory) and personal narrative (individual memory) operate differently.
Generational Memories and the History of the Mahina Family
Through the story of a small town called Mahina and the history of a family rooted there, the novel presents a multidimensional view of modern Spanish history. Through the generational narrative spanning Mahina’s great-grandfather, grandfather, father, and Manuel, the novel traces how each generation has internalized and responded to historical wounds.
Her great-grandfather, Pedro Exposito, is a figure who symbolizes the frustration and disillusionment of Spain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Born out of wedlock and raised in an orphanage, he is depicted as a mysterious figure who, after participating in the Cuban War, lives in silence while thoroughly concealing his past. The defeat of 1898—that is, Spain’s loss of imperial status—remained a national trauma, and Pedro occupies a place in the work as a symbolic figure of that era.
The silence of this great-great-grandfather reveals that the wounds of the past remain unhealed and lie dormant. Fearing that delving into the past might bring about another tragedy, he chose silence over clarification, and this silence serves as a device that maintains tension throughout the novel. It is also linked to mystical elements, such as the incorrupt female mummy discovered at Casa de las Torres, driving the mystery all the way to the conclusion.
His maternal grandfather, Manuel (the repetition of the name is an intentional contrast), is a figure who epitomizes the Spanish Civil War that broke out in 1936; he is portrayed as a devout man with Republican leanings. He believes his actions are a duty, but ultimately that belief leads to reckless sacrifice and is sometimes expressed as domestic violence. His character—a mixture of religious conviction, bravado, and violence—is linked to the tragedy of the Civil War.
Memories of the defeated Republicans could not be expressed publicly; silence was enforced by state power. Those who returned to their hometowns after the war lived lives of silence under surveillance and repression, and those experiences had to remain locked away in their personal memories. The novel captures the atmosphere of this era through the stories of the Civil War that Manuel hears from Uncle Rafael, Uncle Pepe, and Lieutenant Chamorro, as well as through the fate of Major Gallas, the hero of Mahina.
Major Galas is portrayed as a Republican hero but ultimately chooses exile and leaves for the United States. Lieutenant Chamorro, who followed him, spends years in silence in Mahina under the regime’s surveillance. These characters symbolize the defeat in the war and the subsequent social exclusion.
The protagonist’s father represents the generation that came of age after the civil war ended in 1939. Having experienced the war at a young age, this generation lost their education and livelihoods and had to endure harsh realities just to make ends meet. Postwar poverty and the lack of compensation from the state turned them into perpetual victims and losers.
Manuel himself belongs to the generation that symbolizes the transition to democracy following Franco’s death in 1975. Due to his profession as a simultaneous interpreter, he travels the world, experiencing firsthand a crisis of identity and cultural conflict. Like the intellectuals who dreamed of ideals under Franco’s oppression, he witnesses a form of democracy that falls short of his expectations after the end of the dictatorship and experiences disappointment.
The democratization process following 1975 was closer to compromise than to a clean break. Social silence persisted due to the lingering presence of the dictatorship’s supporters and the fear of bringing the past into the public discourse; as a result, many citizens longed for the stability (public order and economic growth) of the Franco era and felt disillusioned by the chaos and economic hardships of the newly arrived democracy. This shift also led to the spread of a cynical consumer culture.
Manuel’s wanderings, his reunion with Nadia, and his journey back to Mahina—where he discovers his roots and sense of belonging—constitute a narrative of personal identity recovery. As he confronts, one by one, his great-great-grandfather’s silence and his family’s hidden history, he ultimately uncovers the link between the history of his ordinary, poor family and the legend of Mahina, revealing hope for the future.
In this way, the novel contrasts “history”—as collective memory—with “narrative”—as personal memory—by repeating and elaborating on a single event through various voices. The structure, which moves toward a conclusion of identity restoration amid the interplay of silence and revelation, forgetfulness and recovery, sustains the tension throughout the work.
“Riders on the Storm” — A Symbol of Personal Memory and Healing
In Part 2, “Cavalry in the Downpour,” Jim Morrison’s song “Riders on the Storm” is the music that Manuel listened to repeatedly during his adolescence. Enchanted by the image of horsemen riding through a stormy night described in the lyrics, Manuel soothes his dreary adolescence by imagining himself fleeing Mahina alone on rainy nights to a distant place. In this way, memory sometimes imbues a single person with the symbolism of a grand historical narrative, yet at the same time, it is often composed of very trivial and peripheral scenes.
While Part 1, “The Kingdom of Voices,” dealt with collective memory surrounding the Spanish Civil War—the violence, destruction, ideological conflicts, and reconciliation of the war—Part 2 shifts its focus to the narratives of individuals who are isolated and fragmented within urban civilization. The protagonist, Manuel, lives a life disconnected from urbanization and harbors gaps in his memory; Part Two is a story of how he recovers his fragmented memories through Nadia’s personal history, which fills those very gaps.
During the uncertain era of the transition to democracy following Franco’s death, the lives of divided individuals were reevaluated as autonomous ways of being worthy of respect. The process by which people with different backgrounds and futures validated and acknowledged one another’s lives became crucial, and the encounter between Manuel and Nadia symbolically illustrates this process. As they validate each other’s lives, the two reflect on their own wounds and gradually reclaim their identities.
Manuel, who appears as the author’s alter ego, exposes the tragedy of the civil war and the illusions of ideology through his personal memories. However, the story does not stop at mere exposure; it also explores the shadows of the past and nightmarish memories that continue to loom over individuals’ lives even after the civil war has ended. It further conveys the identity formed through this shared past as a community bound by a common destiny, as well as hope for a future where healing is possible.
The biography of Major Galas, told through Nadia’s voice, occupies a particularly important place in this work. Galas, born into an elite military family with a promising future, ultimately lost his wife, son, and other family members after standing by his convictions, forcing him to seek asylum in the United States. Nadia, his daughter born out of loneliness and an unwanted marriage, became his reason for living. Determined not to forget Spain, Galas raised her in the Spanish tradition before returning with her to Mahina.
Major Galas is a legendary figure in Mahina—a hero whom young Manuel came to revere after hearing stories about him from the village elders. Gallas’s life and the replica of Rembrandt’s ‘The Polish Cavalryman’—which follows him like a shadow—become crucial symbols that connect the story of Mahina and the memories of its characters, all centered on him.
‘The Polish Cavalryman’ — The Link Between Memories Evoked by Paintings and Photographs
In Part 3, Rembrandt’s painting ‘The Polish Cavalryman’ serves as the key medium for evoking memories. Seventeen-year-old Manuel, staggering drunk while trying to soothe the pain of his first heartbreak, happens to meet Nadia and sees the painting at her home. Unconscious of the fact that he is in the home of Major Gallas—whom he had long admired—the painting reminds him of Jim Morrison’s image of a cavalryman, prompting him to confide in Nadia about his emotions that night and his urge to leave. At that moment, Nadia becomes the recipient of Manuel’s first kiss.
That brief, one-night encounter remains a blacked-out memory for Manuel, fading from his mind, but Nadia cherishes the memory of Manuel from that day for the rest of her life. Later, the two go their separate ways and grow into adults. When they reunite by chance at an international conference, Nadia has dyed her hair blonde and is using her ex-husband’s surname, Allison. Nadia recognizes Manuel at a glance, but Manuel does not recognize her at all.
Manuel travels to New York in search of the blonde Alison and, at a museum there, comes face-to-face with Rembrandt’s ‘The Polish Cavalry’. The painting evokes a feeling that is both unfamiliar and familiar; Manuel feels it gives him the strangest sensation of any painting he has ever seen, and he cannot take his eyes off it. Nadia recognizes her father Galas’s self-portrait in the painting, while Manuel vaguely recalls his lost childhood.
Eventually, through the same painting hanging in Nadia’s apartment, Manuel recovers his memory of that pivotal night when he transitioned from adolescence to adulthood. As he looks at the photographs that the photographer Ramiro had entrusted to Major Galas, he revives old memories from his youth of his parents, maternal grandparents, great-grandfather, and the people of Mahina. He realizes just how precious those days—when he longed to escape—were to him, and how those wounds can be healed.
In this way, memory is depicted in the work as an essential element in the formation and preservation of the self. Characters like Manuel, who experience memory loss, are constantly plagued by a sense of frustration and bewilderment. Memories are stored deep within the heart, where they can be recognized intuitively, yet at times, we do not know how they were stored there. The process of gathering scattered fragments into one place and bringing them to mind is the core narrative of ‘The Polish Cavalry’.
In this novel, in particular, photographs function as a device for gathering and arranging the scattered pieces of the past. Munóns Molina illustrates how fragments of memory repeatedly surface not only through writing but also through various sensory images such as music, painting, and photography. The scattered photographs, which do not follow logical causality or a chain of events, form an organic structure through suggestive imagery, recreating Manuel’s family history, Mahina’s history, and the history of Spain.
Ultimately, ‘Polish Cavalry’ depicts the process of affirming identity and moving toward healing through the intertwining of individual memory and collective history, as well as images and narratives. As images such as Rembrandt’s paintings, Ramiro’s photographs, and Jim Morrison’s lyrics repeatedly appear, they fill the gaps in memory; the work consistently conveys how these filled gaps become the starting point for life in the present.
