UN DÍA DE CÓLERA: LE DOS DE MAYO SELON PÉREZ REVERTE

Abstract

This reading of Arturo Pérez Reverte’s A Day of Choler (Un día de cólera), dedicated to the events that took place in Madrid on May 2nd, 1808, tries to account for the real challenge the novelist has faced in a work that includes 300 characters (or at least 300 names of historical figures) and which takes place during the 24 hours of that eventful day. The novel does not only deal with the bloody encounters between Spanish subjects and French soldiers but it also foregrounds the line dividing the Spaniards (political power or what is left of it versus the people of Madrid, the true heroes in this event). If on the one hand it soberly grants the heroic nature of the army offi cers Daoiz and Velarde, on the other it does not forget the almost anonymous heroes that fought at the Parque de Monteleón, whom he compares to those who took part in the epic fight at Fuerte Álamo. In general, overcoming the facile stereotypes of both sides, it questions the event’s mythic dimension, refuting an interpretive trend born out of the liberal idelology of the Spanish nineteenth-century.