Bakunin’s Turtledoves (260 pages) is one of a series of novels dealing with the antecedents, duration and aftermath of the Spanish Civil War (1936-9). Three intertwined narratives trace the life of a Galician anarchist, Camilo Sabio Doldán, and of a book with no title or author’s name, which he is trying to recover.

         In the earliest of the three narratives, Camilo’s grandfather, Estevo Doldán Patiño, was born in 1851 on board a ship carrying his parents from Galicia to Argentina. In Buenos Aires, he went to school and learned the guitar. Having read about Mikhail Bakunin and others, Estevo became an anarchist and worked for a newspaper as a typesetter and journalist. Here he fell in love with the cleaner, Cristal, and they had a daughter, Nora, Camilo’s mother. Estevo’s articles on agrarian reform led to the couple being deported in 1905 and they returned to their village in Galicia, Celas de Peiro. Here they fell foul of the parish priest, Manuel Andión, who despised their talk of freedom and justice and reported them to the Civil Guard. In the village, Estevo was considered a man of knowledge and insisted that everyone working the land should be able to read and write and understand the rudiments of accountancy. He himself worked the land, helped to cook and wash the dishes, and at night would read from his book and play the guitar. His wife, Cristal, was considered an eccentric for smoking tobacco in public. In 1927, however, at the instigation of the priest, Estevo was arrested and died of pneumonia. In revenge, Camilo, who was eleven at the time, set fire to the village church. Cristal died two weeks later.

         The local schoolteacher, Xesús Mejuto, suggested sending Camilo to Vilaboa in Coruña, where he could stay with his aunt and receive a better education. He arrived in 1931, aged fifteen. His aunt, Lola, was forty and worked as a seamstress with two younger girls, one of whom, Rosalía, would later become Camilo’s wife. Lola had a boyfriend, Ricardo, who had emigrated to America. She was still waiting for him to return a wealthy man. Camilo joined a band, playing his grandfather’s guitar. He also joined the local football team. Lola received a box from Ricardo in America and waited three months before opening it to discover that it contained a Singer sewing machine. Meanwhile Camilo became more active in anarchist meetings and started going out with Rosalía. Ricardo returned from America with tuberculosis. He had gone there without work, but been taken in by a Galician from Celanova, Tomás, and started work as a waiter. When Tomás died, he left Ricardo his apartment and some shares. Ricardo was about to return to Galicia when in 1929 the stock market collapsed. The restaurant where he worked closed, he lost all his shares and with the rest of his money could barely afford the Singer sewing machine and the cost of his passage.

         Back in Galicia, Ricardo and Lola were married. Instead of spending his wedding night with Lola, Ricardo went with Camilo and some other anarchists to help cut Coruña’s electricity supply as part of a general strike. They were almost caught by the Civil Guard while filling up with petrol. Lola was so infuriated she wouldn’t let Ricardo lay a hand on her. Later that week, the anarchists besieged the Civil Guard barracks in Oleiros. One of their number was killed and a leading anarchist, Santi Noroeste, was arrested. Ricardo was wounded in the leg and, after the assault, was confined to bed with a terrible cough. He died of tuberculosis a few days later. On hearing the news, Camilo rushed to Lola’s house to discover that Lola was in denial. She began to wait for Ricardo to return from America again. One night she entered Camilo’s bedroom, believing him to be Ricardo, and they made love. The next day she claimed that Ricardo had had to return to America. It turned out that she was pregnant. Camilo was so ashamed of his actions that he kept his infidelity a secret from Rosalía. This was the secret that would pursue him for the rest of his life.

         Camilo visited Santi Noroeste in prison and took down articles which Santi dictated for the anarchist newspaper. Camilo was proud to claim his friendship, but disturbed to discover that Santi’s girlfriend, Mercedes, was conducting an affair with a prominent Fascist, Dionisio Boutureira. Lola suffered a miscarriage and later disappeared (it turns out she went to Ricardo’s apartment in New York and devoted her final years to prostitution). In March 1936, Santi and other anarchists were released as part of an amnesty.

         In the second narrative, Camilo remembers how the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936 to everyone’s surprise and he had to take to the mountains. After five months, he could no longer withstand the cold or the distance from his new wife, Rosalía. He returned to their house and bricked himself inside a corner of their living room. He only emerged from his hiding place at night and it was here that he learned his father had been shot by the Civil Guard for being his father. Rosalía fell pregnant and by the fifth month her state was so obvious she had to claim she’d conceived the child outside of wedlock in order to protect her husband’s identity. After the child, Branca, was born, Camilo could no longer bear the rumours about his wife and allowed himself to be arrested, so that at least people could know the child was his. He was taken to Coruña Prison, where he met Andrés the barber and shared a cell with Bernardo Figueiras, known as the San Amaro Cuntlicker. After his parents had been shot and his sister raped, Bernardo had taken refuge inside a mausoleum in San Amaro Cemetery, Coruña. The mausoleum belonged to a policeman, Castañas, who had tortured an anarchist, Toño Penelas. He placed the body of Castañas in Penelas’ grave so that the two enemies could reconcile their differences and then went to visit Castañas’ widow, stealing valuable items and performing cunnilingus on the widow. After that, he visited the wife of the first and last soldier to rape his sister, when the husband was out, and, having forced her to cook him an omelette, performed cunnilingus on her on the kitchen table while feasting on the omelette. In the same way, he visited other policemen’s wives, forcing them to reveal the ignominy of the assault to their husbands and stealing articles of value, which he gave to Palmira, a milkmaid, so that they could be used to benefit the poor. It was Palmira’s husband who eventually reported him to the police.

         In prison, the guards confiscated the book that Camilo was reading. The prison governor promised to spare Camilo his life if he could learn the whole book off by heart in the space of fifteen days. Meanwhile Bernardo was executed. He left behind a letter to Palmira, in which he confessed his love for her. In front of forty Falangists, Camilo managed to recite the book from memory and was released, much to the dismay of the prison guard, Dalmiro Ferreira. However, he forgot the book in his cell. He returned to the village to discover that his childhood friend, Marcelo Uzal, had enlisted with Franco’s forces. Camilo and Rosalía decided to emigrate to Uruguay, leaving Branca with Rosalía’s mother until they were in a position to send for her.

         In Montevideo, Camilo was employed as a barman and Rosalía worked as a seamstress. Camilo attended night school. They sent for Branca when she was six. Camilo proceeded to study agronomy at university. After almost twenty years in Montevideo, Camilo learned that his mother had fallen ill and the family returned to Galicia. When they reached the village, however, Camilo’s mother had already died. They moved into her house and began to work the land, using the knowledge stored in Grandpa Estevo’s notebook. Branca, grown up by now, went to Coruña to study to be a schoolteacher. Camilo received a visit from his friend, Marcelo Uzal, who had joined the Nationalist forces. He came to apologize for not having the courage to flee instead of enlisting and ended up revealing that Branca was going out with Agustín, Dionisio Boutureira’s son by Mercedes. Agustín and Branca were later married.

         In the third narrative, it is 1992 and Camilo spends the summers and weekends in the village of Celas de Peiro in the company of his daughter, Branca, son-in-law, Agustín, and grandson, Lázaro. Rosalía has been dead for five years, but he continues to write her letters. He hears from the Athenaeum in Santiago de Compostela that a certain A.D.B. has bought the last remaining copy of a book he has been after for the last forty years. In a letter to his late wife, Camilo informs her that he plans to travel to Santiago to recover this book that played such a crucial role in his life. Meanwhile his grandson, Lázaro, travels to Barcelona for an operation to treat his blindness. Camilo waits outside the house of the buyer, A.D.B., and, when the buyer comes out, he follows him to a square, where the buyer proceeds to recite the book from memory in front of a man accompanied by his granddaughter. Camilo realizes that the man with the child is none other than the prison guard Dalmiro Ferreira and the book the buyer recites is the same book Camilo recited in order to be released from prison. Camilo summons the courage to approach the buyer, who turns out to be Andrés the barber. Andrés explains how other prisoners attempted to win their freedom by reciting the book, but failed. Andrés, however, was successful and managed to leave the prison in Coruña for Mexico with his wife and child. Camilo makes a phone call to Barcelona and is overjoyed to learn that Lázaro’s operation has been successful and Lázaro has recovered his sight. In return for giving him back the book, Andrés takes Camilo at three in the morning to recite the book in front of Dalmiro Ferreira’s house. Dalmiro Ferreira shoots Andrés at point-blank range and is arrested. Camilo recovers the book. In a final letter to his wife before dying, Camilo confesses how he slept with Lola one night. He is found dead by his grandson, Lázaro. In a postscript, the author informs the reader that the book Camilo sought all his life was in fact a novel written by his grandfather, Estevo, which was published anonymously in an anarchist magazine in Argentina.

         This is a very warm-hearted narrative which introduces the reader to the turbulent politics of Spain during the twentieth century, from Primo de Rivera’s military dictatorship (1923-30) to the short-lived Second Republic (1931-9), including the Spanish Civil War, and ensuing Francoist regime (1939-75). Bakunin’s Turtledoves focuses on the effects of this period on a particular family, that of the anarchist Camilo Sabio Doldán, threading together themes of imprisonment, emigration, betrayal, love, separation and reunion. Bakunin’s Turtledoves is considered one of the most important Galician novels to deal with this period and was awarded the García Barros Prize for best novel in the year 2000.

Synopsis © Jonathan Dunne