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El intruso | La horda
El presente volumen reúne El intruso y La horda, las dos obras más importantes del ciclo de novelas sociales. Blasco Ibáñez estaba convencido de que la novela debía ser un reflejo social de su tiempo. El intruso se inspira en los sucesos anticlericales acaecidos en Bilbao en 1903 a raíz de una serie de procesiones que enfrentaron los mineros y los católicos devotos que habían venido de toda la provincia. La horda, en cambio, nos habla de la lucha social a través del ascenso y la caída de un intelectual fracasado que se esfuerza por dejar atrás una existencia marcada por la explotación y la marginación.
656 pages, Paperback
Published January 16, 2020
1 person is currently reading
14 people want to read
About the author
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
703 books149 followersVicente Blasco Ibáñez (January 29, 1867 – January 28, 1928) was a Spanish realist novelist writing in Spanish, a screenwriter and occasional film director.
Born in Valencia, today he is best known in the English-speaking world for his World War I novel The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. He is also known for his political activities.
He finished studying law, but hardly practised. He divided his time between politics, literature. He was a fan of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.
His life, it can be said, tells a more interesting story than his novels. He was a militant Republican partisan in his youth and founded a newspaper, El Pueblo (translated as either The Town or The People) in his hometown. The newspaper aroused so much controversy that it was brought to court many times and censored. He made many enemies and was shot and almost killed in one dispute. The bullet was caught in the clasp of his belt. He had several stormy love affairs.
He volunteered as the proofreader for the novel Noli Me Tangere, in which the Filipino patriot José Rizal expressed his contempt of the Spanish colonization of the Philippines. He traveled to Argentina in 1909 where two new cities, Nueva Valencia and Cervantes, were created. He gave conferences on historical events and Spanish literature. Tired and disgusted with government failures and inaction, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez moved to Paris, France at the beginning of World War I.
He was a supporter of the Allies in World War I.
He died in Menton, France at the age of 61.
Born in Valencia, today he is best known in the English-speaking world for his World War I novel The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. He is also known for his political activities.
He finished studying law, but hardly practised. He divided his time between politics, literature. He was a fan of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.
His life, it can be said, tells a more interesting story than his novels. He was a militant Republican partisan in his youth and founded a newspaper, El Pueblo (translated as either The Town or The People) in his hometown. The newspaper aroused so much controversy that it was brought to court many times and censored. He made many enemies and was shot and almost killed in one dispute. The bullet was caught in the clasp of his belt. He had several stormy love affairs.
He volunteered as the proofreader for the novel Noli Me Tangere, in which the Filipino patriot José Rizal expressed his contempt of the Spanish colonization of the Philippines. He traveled to Argentina in 1909 where two new cities, Nueva Valencia and Cervantes, were created. He gave conferences on historical events and Spanish literature. Tired and disgusted with government failures and inaction, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez moved to Paris, France at the beginning of World War I.
He was a supporter of the Allies in World War I.
He died in Menton, France at the age of 61.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 8, 2024
It's tempting to call this Spain's version of Emile Zola's 'Germinal'. The novel begins in the mines of the Basque country where the principal protagonist, doctor Luis Aresti, has decided to live among the poor and often transient miners rather than in the more comfortable surroundings of the bourgeois 'barrios' of Bilbao.
Blasco Ibañez offers us a powerful critique of the living conditions of the mining community, as well as of the exploitative hierarchies that exist within the community itself. It's made clear that enormous fortunes are being made on the back of the miners' labour and so this is also a critique of the incipient capitalism that was taking root in Northern Spain at the time ('El Intruso' was written in three months in 1904).
So far so Zola, but 'El Intruso' is both more than and less than 'Germinal'. It's less in that Blasco never actually takes us down the mines, or at least not in the grim detail offered by Zola (who could forget Zola's description of the horses that lived and died underground without ever seeing daylight?). But it's more, too, in that while 'El Intruso' is an attack on capitalism it also takes on that other enormous influence on Spanish society: the Catholic church, and, more particularly, the Jesuits.
In this context the other principal figure in the novel, Sánchez Morueta, plays a crucial role. Morueta is Aresti´s uncle. He lives in sumptuous surroundings in Bilbao and he´s made a huge amount of money from one of the businesses associated with the mines - shipping. Aresti and Morueta are both relatively liberal, but Morueta married into a traditional, part-aristocratic, family with close ties to the church. In describing the ups and downs of Morueta's later life Blasco lays bare the pernicious influence of the Catholic Church, even on those with in principle the least to gain from adhering to its creed.
As with the very best of Blasco's novels, the plot and the social critique that's woven into it are propelled by the relationships between the convincingly-drawn characters (they're never just simple stereotypes) and by the end I felt I'd learnt as much about the conditions and conditioning of late 19th century industrialising Spain as I would from any history book.
Aresti remains true to his modern, liberal, beliefs, and when he's asked by a sceptical interlocutor for his alternative to the Catholic faith, his answer stands as a summary of Blasco's message in 'El Intruso': 'I worship Social Justice as an end and I believe in Science as the means'.
Blasco Ibañez offers us a powerful critique of the living conditions of the mining community, as well as of the exploitative hierarchies that exist within the community itself. It's made clear that enormous fortunes are being made on the back of the miners' labour and so this is also a critique of the incipient capitalism that was taking root in Northern Spain at the time ('El Intruso' was written in three months in 1904).
So far so Zola, but 'El Intruso' is both more than and less than 'Germinal'. It's less in that Blasco never actually takes us down the mines, or at least not in the grim detail offered by Zola (who could forget Zola's description of the horses that lived and died underground without ever seeing daylight?). But it's more, too, in that while 'El Intruso' is an attack on capitalism it also takes on that other enormous influence on Spanish society: the Catholic church, and, more particularly, the Jesuits.
In this context the other principal figure in the novel, Sánchez Morueta, plays a crucial role. Morueta is Aresti´s uncle. He lives in sumptuous surroundings in Bilbao and he´s made a huge amount of money from one of the businesses associated with the mines - shipping. Aresti and Morueta are both relatively liberal, but Morueta married into a traditional, part-aristocratic, family with close ties to the church. In describing the ups and downs of Morueta's later life Blasco lays bare the pernicious influence of the Catholic Church, even on those with in principle the least to gain from adhering to its creed.
As with the very best of Blasco's novels, the plot and the social critique that's woven into it are propelled by the relationships between the convincingly-drawn characters (they're never just simple stereotypes) and by the end I felt I'd learnt as much about the conditions and conditioning of late 19th century industrialising Spain as I would from any history book.
Aresti remains true to his modern, liberal, beliefs, and when he's asked by a sceptical interlocutor for his alternative to the Catholic faith, his answer stands as a summary of Blasco's message in 'El Intruso': 'I worship Social Justice as an end and I believe in Science as the means'.
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