Juan G. Atienza, “Sangre fresca para el muerto” [Fresh Blood for the Dead Man] (1974)

Juan Garcia Atienza began his career in cinema and television, rather than prose fiction. He contributed to or was sole writer of several film screenplays in the 1960s and directed a number of television documentaries in the 1970s. Using a somewhat flippant, humorous diction, this story is set on Mallorca in the present or thereabouts, which means that the island is being greedily bought up and developed by foreigners for the tourist trade. Locals, such as the focalizing Sans family, can make money from this in two main ways: by selling prime-location plots of land on the coast to the foreign developers or by employment in one of the service sectors for tourists, the latter only if they speak German and English. The comic treatment of the vampire paradigm relies on parody and caricature, culled at least as much from cinema as from prose fiction.