I think that Nada has been my favourite book of the term so far, providing an fascinating look into postwar trauma, mental health, and class inequality set in unsettling, broken Barcelona. There are quiet acknowledgements of the war’s atrocities, like the old houses turned to rubble that are merely the subject of Gerardo’s comments, that almost seem to betray a collective resignation to what happened. I didn’t think too much about the title until I realized from the lecture that Andrea’s tendency to look at the events unfolding in her life as stories seemed to conflict with the secrets and imperfections of her family and the distance between her expectations and her reality, like at Pons’s party.

It actually seems like nothingness pervades much of Andrea’s life and ultimately becomes something to tolerate, especially when she looks for meaning or narrative qualities in her life. Ena, whose family is described as simple and “respectable,” becomes dissatisfied with her mundane life as well and seeks to find something interesting in Calle de Aribau, leading to her becoming involved with Román in an increasingly vicious “battle” that seemed to terrify her at times, as she later reveals. As Andrea’s life seems to plunge deeper into sadness, watching Juan become increasingly violent, staying silent about her grandmother’s hunger so she can eat a passable amount of food, and beginning to suspect something about Ena and Román, she begins longing for the simplicity of being at the beach with Jaime and Ena and for happiness without censorship and without secrets.

At one point, she thinks, “Who can understand the thousand threads that join people’s souls and the significance of their words? Not the girl I was then.” That quote highlights how the web of interactions she has suddenly been dropped into is far deeper than a simple narrative, but as she grasps at snippets of meaning in her world that are slowly revealed to her, some lessons about love and betrayal begin to surface. As she prepares to go to Madrid and reflect upon her year in Barcelona, she claims to have taken nothing from Calle de Aribau, and materially, she is right; she is not better-off and has not found love as she wished. However, she discovered enduring, pure friendship with Ena, surviving various challenges, and matured to see the world of abuse and open secrets of Barcelona, censored only from being explicitly verbalized. I felt that in that sense, Nada was almost a twisted celebration of simplicity and nothingness, in addition to a depiction of Spain’s trauma burdening individuals.

My question is “In what ways was Andrea forced to piece the narrative of her family and the war’s impact on them together, and what were the emotional consequences?”