In recent years much Spanish literary criticism has been characterized by debates about collective and historical memory stemming from a national obsession with the past that has seen an explosion of novels and films about the Spanish Civil War and Franco dictatorship. This growth of socalled memory studies in literary scholarship has focused on the representation of memory and trauma in contemporary narratives dealing with the Civil War and ensuing dictatorship. In contrast the novel of the postwar period has received relatively little critical attention of late despite the fact that memory and trauma also feature in different ways and to varying degrees in many works written during the Franco years.