La identidad reelaborada en Galíndez de Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

Abstract

Identity is constantly constructed through discourse. In this sense, we can speak of a “identity-in-discursive” and of an “identity-in-practice” to refer to the linguistic process that forms our personality (Kanno and Stuart 238). Muriel Colbert's investigation into the disappearance of Jesús de Galíndez is a reworking of this character's personality, in which objective facts, subjective impressions and fiction are combined both in-discursive and in-practice. In this study, it is analyzed how this novel presents that the construction of identity is a cultural fiction resulting from the use of language (Sevilla-Vallejo 2017b 291). Muriel Colbert intends to reveal what the last moments of the one she considers her hero were like, but the testimonies she receives, both in interviews and in documents, are constantly transforming the image she had up to that moment. And what is more interesting is how facts and fiction about Galíndez also affect the identity of the researcher and the other people who come into contact with him. Galíndez's complexity and contradiction reflect the same political complexity in which he lived and the clash between the desires and the reality of each of the characters. Galíndez invites us to a critical reflection beyond the data offered (Bodenmüller 75) and to the search for true identity in a context where lies and concealment predominate.