page_title: Domingo Cirici Ventalló
section_title: Novelist
hierarchical_section_title: Domingo Cirici Ventalló / Novelist
caption_attribution_description: Español: La República española en 1.91...
context_page_description: Domingo Cirici Ventalló was a Spanish novelist, editor and political militant. During his lifetime he gained wide popularity as author of 4 novels; currently classified as political fiction or dystopian prose, they are considered second-rate literature. His best known work La República española en 1.91... fairly accurately predicted the advent of the Republic, its sectarian politics, collapse of public order and the ensuing military coup. As a journalist Cirici contributed to some 30 Conservative and Catholic dailies, but is best known as editor-in-chief of El Correo Español and briefly the key author of El Debate. Politically Cirici remained a Carlist; he advanced the Traditionalist outlook both in his novels and in his press work, though he did not hold any post in the party and his attempts to obtain a seat in the Cortes ended in failure.
context_section_description: In 1911 Cirici and José Arrufat Mestres released La República española en 1.91..., the novel next year followed – this time authored by Cirici only – by sort of a sequel, Memorias de Muñoz Villena. Both books were political pamphlets aimed against the Left and featured Spain of the near future. The monarchy was toppled and replaced with a republic, ran by a republican-socialist coalition; it declared agrarian reform and official atheism, banning public Catholic cult; as growing chaos and separatism produced collapse of public order, a rebellious general staged a coup intended to save the country. The narratives featured numerous real life personalities, usually set in sinister roles of cynical political manipulators: Lerroux, Alvarez, Galdós, Largo Caballero, Weyler, Iglesias, Romanones, Azcárate, Alcalá-Zamora, Besteiro and many others, though the rebel general was a fictitious person. A few episodes might have seemed off-limits, e.g. Galdós as president of the republic was killed in an assassination attempt.
  Following commercial success of especially República Cirici adhered to the same genre of political fiction when in 1914 he published El secreto de lord Kitchener. Again a voice in heated public discourse, the novel formed part of ongoing propaganda war about the role of Spain in the unfolding European conflict. It advanced a vehemently pro-German and anti-British outlook; the novel was formatted as a series of rather loosely related stand-alone chapters, each telling its own story. The narrative followed the future course of the war and ended with total defeat of the Entente; France was overrun, Britain lost almost all its overseas possessions, Germany obtained sort of Gibraltar in Kent and became the unchallenged European might, federated with Belgium and Poland. Among many real-life personalities, also the foreign ones, again Liberal and Republican Spanish politicians were portrayed as lousy, mischievous failures; Kitchener was killed by an outraged suffragette. The novel was a success; moreover, it was promptly translated into German and Swedish.
   
  La tragedia del diputado Anfrúns was first serialized in El Debate from January to May 1917, later that year released also as a book. Cirici remained within the limits of militant political fiction, though this time the plot was set not in the future but in the recent past. The novel focused on Catalonia; Cirici's venom was intended, apart from his usual liberal-republican enemies, also for the Catalanists, all indulging in corruption and caciquismo. The novel tells the story of a young Liberal political hopeful. His cynicism and wit earn him first a place in the Barcelona ayuntamiento and then in the Cortes, let alone millions of a cleverly married girl from a Mexico-based indiano family. However, he is eventually outsmarted by equally cynical collaborators and malicious wife; Anfrúns dies when involved in half-legal war supplies to the French army. Like in Memorias the key protagonist was a fictitious character interfacing mostly with real-life personalities; apart from the customary black characters of Lerroux or Romanones, this time they included many Catalans like Comas y Masferrer, Cambó and Planas y Casals.
caption: cover of La República española en 1.91...
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