Juan Goytisolo is, in the eyes of many, Spain's foremost contemporary novelist. He came to prominence as a leading member of the group of radical young intellectuals known as the ‘Generacioń del medio siglo’, which was the first to contest the prevailing ideology of the Franco regime. This literary generation was the standard-bearer of the type of social realism that characterized the late 1950s and the early 1960s in Spain. Goytisolo himself sums up the characteristics of this group in El furgón de cola, describing them as non-conformist, Marxist-orientated, agnostic, and, in terms of literary technique, traditionalist (FC, 82). Of that group, Goytisolo has undoubtedly been the one who made the most radical change in terms of literary theory and practice, with the result that there is a clear distinction between the early period, from Juegos de manos (1954) to Fin de fiesta (1962), and the period commencing with the publication of Señas de identidad (1966). The distinction is such that it is possible to think that the two periods correspond to the work of two different authors. Of course, closer inspection reveals very clear connections between the novels of the early period and those of the later phase.

While Goytisolo does not in any sense disown the works of his previous period, it is undoubtedly the case that he profoundly disagrees with their aesthetic premises, a fact which he makes clear in El furgón de cola, a volume of essays published in 1967, which, as well as being a critique of the whole trend of 1950s literature, is also a profound act of self-criticism. Goytisolo firmly believes that he found his literary way with the writing of Señas de identidad, and the novels and essays that have ensued from that time, which constitute what he himself recognizes as his ‘obra adulta’, reveal a writer who, while still constantly exploring new territory and testing the limits of language and the novel form, is doing so from the solid basis of firmly held and carefully pondered aesthetic principles.

It is with these aesthetic principles and their manifestation in the novels and, to a lesser degree, in Goytisolo's non-fiction that this study is concerned.