ABSTRACT
This chapter explains two very different texts on the legacy of the Civil War and the early period of Francoist repression, which both appeared in Spain in 2007, the year that the Law of Historical Memory was passed by the Spanish Congress. Esther Tusquets' Habiamos ganado la guerra is a first volume of personal memoirs from a major writer best known for her pioneering novels with a lesbian theme, published some thirty years earlier. The chapter suggests that the disagreement over Las 13 rosas is thus not simply a case of a failure of historicity but rather a more fundamental conflict over affect and aesthetics. Tusquets thus incorporates into her already hybrid testimony strategies of description, narration, and syntax that are distinctively novelistic. A more typical, and extended, scene takes place at Tusquets' German school, where a relatively progressive and coeducational regime was supplemented for the Spanish kids by Catholic observance.
