Reasons for a Baroque: Angel Maria Pascual and Disappointment

Angel Maria Pascual (1911-1947) has very often been blamed for the sophistication of his writing and the baroque bias of many of his works, such as the novels Amadis (1943) and Don Rhone! de Espana (1944), the articles Cartas de Cosmosia (1942-1946) published on El Espanol, the essay Catilina (1948) and the poems, collected in one single volume, Capital de tercer orden (1947a). However, at the same time he published these books his style was shown more "classical", sober, and perfectly readable in his Glosas a la ciudad. The study of the sources of his baroque writing and the way he combined them, therefore, shows that it contains, rather than a mere personal attitude, a political and aesthetic message: the author's disappointment at the new political regime and the betrayal of the expectations that he entertained during the war.