Juan Marsé is a hybrid whose vigorous non-conformity under the Franco dictatorship, and since the Transition to democracy, has presented a constant challenge to hegemonic discourses. Though a Catalan speaker throughout the years of Francoist post-war repression of regional difference and language, his brief schooling was in Castilian, as were the books he read and the films he saw. A religious sceptic, he was brought up a Catholic in Franco’s Spain and actually chose to involve himself in his local parish’s youth activities, lured by the ping-pong tables, plays, music and girls that he depicts so vividly in his narratives. The tensions generated by his negotiation of these areas of conflict provide a powerful and ironic driving force in his narratives.

My aim in this book is to discuss ways in which over the last forty years Marsé has represented the impact of Catholicism on post-war, post-Franco and now resolutely Catalan Barcelona, where (apart from a year in Paris) he has lived his entire life. To study his use of Catholic iconography in his novels is to expose a hitherto unrecognised level and subtlety of critique in his depiction of both Spanish and Catalan Catholic culture. The combination of religion and politics can be contentious and yet Marsé has chosen to approach it in a spirit of play. He frames narrative as play, and icons form part of his narrative games.

To suggest that Marsé plays with icons is to focus on a point of conflict at the centre of his depiction of Catholicism. For the believer, the icon is a theophany, a sacramental presence, a place where the divine may actually be encountered, not merely in the imagination but in reality. For Marsé, icons are a visual form of narrative which combines a dense encoding of doctrine and tradition with the powerfully immediate impact of pictures. To play with icons can be seen as profaning the sacred: challenging doctrine and tradition. Alternatively, it can be taken as an affirmation that icons, doctrine and tradition are susceptible to questioning and reinterpretation. To say that Marsé frames narrative as play is not to say that he approaches Catholic iconography flippantly.