The Time of the Doves

The Time of the Doves (La Plaça del Diamant) is one of the masterpieces of  20th century literature in the Catalan language. Written in 1962, in Geneva, where the author was in exile from francoist Spain, the novel was translated into Spanish (castillian) as early as 1965. The English version would come later, among many others. A modern and very popular classic in Catalan literature, it was turned into a TV series in 1982.

The story of Colometa (little dove, in Catalan) a low class girl living in Barcelona, precisely near La Plaça del Diamant, between the late 1920s and the 1950s. From the years inmediately prior to the Second Republic (1931) and into the darkest period of Franco´s regime, traversing a brutal Civil War (1936-39) and the inmediate postwar years. The Time of the Doves is narrated by an intimate voice, that of Natalia. Or Colometa, as she is "baptized" by Quimet, her mischievous husband.

Natalia's life will go through quite a few shifts and she will also have to face up grave setbacks. Quimet´s ludicrous jealousy and arbitrariness (that she unasertively accepts), the deep sorrow after his death at the front, the misery of the postwar years, the tremendous efforts to sustain her children; even the threat of insanity at some point lying around her. Yet her literary voice oddly stays on with a similar tone. A nice and poetic stream of conciousness, her mind and thoughts flowing pleasantly and aesthetically for the reader. Though apparently not reflecting the emotional impact that setbacks or even tragedy should provoke in her.

Natalia accepts life, its challenges and blows, with a somewhat unnerving lack of asertiveness. Her voice is therefore a symbol of a time and a country. That lack of asertiveness of Catalonia and its people and the whole of Spain, during those opressive years. But Natalia's identity changes, even so. Psychology cannot remain the same in front of life´s agressions and demands. Natalia changes, like every human being throughout existence.

And change, the psychological transformation of one character, is one of the great spectacles that literature can provide. Change in Natalia is a discreet one, exposed in a weird non-passionate way. Her voice is monochromatic, with hardly any apparent variety. Yes, monochromatic o nearly. But of a splendid colour we have seen very few times before.