Juan sin tierra, published in 1975, is the last instalment of the Mendiola trilogy. In it Goytisolo carries to the extreme the process of rupture with the past, subversion of Spanish and Western values, the assault on literary tradition and search for a freer form of writing. Juan sin tierra shares the same concerns that characterize the trilogy as a whole and sets out to take them to a more profound level, with a view to effecting the definitive stage of the process of destruction. As Goytisolo himself said, ‘concibo Juan sin tierra como una obra uÍtima, el finis terrae de mi propia escritura en términos de comunicacioń’ (D, 317).

This development operates at all levels. Hence, in terms of the narrative persona, whereas in Don Julián he had been an exile, located in Tangiers, on the very edge of Spanish territory and still very much fixated with the mother country, in Juan sin tierra the central figure is an even more shadowy character, situated in a small ‘escritorio-cocina’ in Paris, still an exile but one who has assumed his status of ‘Juan sin tierra’ and who revels in this lack of territoriality. The exile from Spain that was still a source of latent bitterness and neurosis to the protagonist of Don Julián is no longer a problem. However, the protagonist is still not free. He has achieved one form of freedom from the constraints of national identity, but he is still oppressed by a wider identity, that of Western society. Hence, the location in Paris is appropriate since the focus of the protagonist's ire is Western values in general. This wider focus was present in Don Julián but now comes to the fore. The horizon of the novel has broadened and the perennial presence of the Arab as a symbol of subversion is extended to include the more general figure of the ‘pariah’.

Juan sin tierra is the final stage of the project of ‘defining oneself negatively’ first referred to in the closing pages of Señas de identidad. In Juan sin tierra, at one point the narrator exhorts: ‘defínanse negativamente’ (240). All the values espoused in Juan sin tierra are, in traditional European terms, ‘negative’, and this for the narrator is the source of their ‘positive’ significance for him. Their focal point is the notion of treachery or betrayal.