Winds of the Night
Winds of the Night (Catalan: El vent de la nit) is a novel by the Catalan author and publisher, Joan Sales. It is set in a devastated and impoverished Catalonia under the heel of the Franco dictatorship after the Spanish Civil War. Its narrator is a Catholic priest who undergoes a major crisis of faith. History of the novel Winds of the Night was originally the fourth part of Joan Sales’ masterwork, Incerta Glòria (Uncertain Glory). The novel was published in 1956 after having been initially rejected by the Francoist censor because it “expressed heretical ideas often in disgusting and obscene language”. Through different editions, Sales continued rewriting and adding to the text, always seeking to escape from the constraints of censorship. In 1971, the greatly expanded definitive version was published, in which the fourth part was entitled Últimes notícies (Latest News). In the 1981 edition of Incerta Glòria, Últimes notícies had become El vent de la nit, novel.la (Winds of the Night, a novel). Finally, in 2012, on the centenary of Sales’ birth, it was published as a separate and self-contained book by his granddaughter, Maria Bohigas. Maria Bohigas later argued that Sales had recognised that the two novels had quite distinct tones and perspectives but was loath to separate them. In fact, in an interview not long before he died, Sales said that, what had been the fourth part of Incerta glòria should have been published later as a separate book but “I’m old now and it’s fine as it is”. It is also the case that separating the text into two novels brings Incerta Glòria to a dramatic end and perhaps therefore a more satisfactory conclusion. Characters Cruells Cruells, a young student for the priesthood at the outbreak of the Civil War, in which he served on the Republican side as a medical adjutant, returns from exile in a French concentration camp for Republican refugees to complete his theological studies and be ordained, but he loses his faith. Cruells having served with the “reds” is an outsider in the Spain of National Catholicism, where bishops give fascist salutes and force Catalan priests to preach in Spanish. Riven by doubt and despair in the face of the bloody horrors of the twentieth century dictatorships (Franco, Stalin, Hitler…), he plumbs the depths of degradation by paying a prostitute for sex and then spending a fortnight with her and her pimp in their sordid flat. He escapes and returns to serve as a priest in the shanty towns on the outskirts of Barcelona, before being dispatched to a rural parish in the Catalan mountains because of his dissenting views. Lamoneda While Cruells was on the losing side in the Spanish Civil War, Lamoneda worked as a Falangist fifth columnist and agent provocateur working in the Republican zone on behalf of Franco’s insurrectionists. However, he too is also an outsider, not having found his place in Franco’s post-war Spain. He raves about his sexual exploits, his “great” unpublished novels and his