The Wrong Blood is a mistranslation of the original title of Manuel de Lope´s 2000 novel La sangre ajena, first published in Spain. In Spanish, “Ajena” means “not mine,” and metaphorically applies to what is foreign; it does not carry the suggestion of error in the word “wrong.” This linguistic point is significant because the novel deals precisely and concretely with what one claims as one’s own, and what one rejects as “other.” In the case of blood, this becomes eerily suggestive: how do we decide what is our blood?, how do we define blood relations and animosities? In this superb novel, blood refers to the way families are built and preserved as well as to the bloodbath of civil war.
Like many recent literary works published in Spain, The Wrong Blood deals with the Spanish Civil War, a conflict that lasted three years (1936-1939) and claimed the lives of half a million Spaniards. It also inaugurated forty years of tyrannical rule by Francisco Franco, and plunged Spain into a period of obscurantism and violence. The recent interest in revisiting the Civil War is fueled by the boom in oral history studies as well as recent trials of Spanish military personnel in human rights violations during the 1970s in Latin America.
Unlike the political terror in those countries, Spain’s dictatorship lasted almost half a century: two generations of Spaniards grew up without a public acknowledgment of what happened during the War. Reconciliation and memory came late; the reverberations continue to haunt the present. The recent granting of the prestigious Comillas Prize in biography and history by Tusquets Publishers to A cambio del olvido by Jon Juaristi and Marina Pino, a memoir of the authors´families history during the Spanish Republic and the Civil War, attest to the resonance of the historical trauma in Spanish society.
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