Autoficción, docuficción y memoria familiar del exilio republicano en La fiesta del oso (2009), de Jordi Soler

Jordi Soler is a Mexican writer who lives in Barcelona and stems from a family of Catalan Republican exiles. In 2009, he publishes La fiesta del oso [The Bear’s Festival] (2009), a novel later included in the trilogy La guerra perdida [The Lost War] (2012). Said trilogy, like other cultural productions created by the grandchildren of the Spanish Republican exiles of 1939, reflects on family memory. La fiesta del oso depicts the narrator’s quest for information about the whereabouts of his great uncle Oriol, a Republican soldier whose trail was lost near the French border. Over the years, the family presumed him dead, with the exception of Arcadi, Oriol’s brother and the narrator’s grandfather, who preferred to believe that he survived somewhere as a successful pianist. After giving a talk, the narrator receives a family picture and a letter suggesting that Oriol didn’t die as the family thought. This news triggers the research of the narrator, who drives from Barcelona to the French Pyrenees in search of further information. This article analyses how fictional and documentary elements interact in the narration to demystify the family memory. The auto-fictional correspondence between the names of the narrator and the real author and the use of docufictional techniques give an impression of authenticity. However, the documentary dimension of the narrative collides with the ironic interpretation and extreme stylisation of characters and situations. In fact, the characters are frequently compared with the creatures of folk tales and the Pyrenean legend of the bear and the maid. Ultimately, the narrator’s inquiry reveals that great uncle Oriol is not the hero and victim his family expected him to be but a vile victimiser, destroying the family myth.