Science Fiction: A Visitor's Perspective

Sometimes the best way to assess the true character of a place, is to see the place through a foreigner’s eyes. Someone who has never been to a specific place sees it in a totally different view from someone who has lived in that place for some time. This view can reveal details of a culture that are not necessarily apparent to the locals who live there. Such is the case in the science fiction novel written by Eduardo Mendoza, No Word from Gurb (1990). The noveldepicts Barcelona from the perspective of an extraterrestrial, a scientist from the constellation Antares, who searches for Gurb, a ship crew member who is thought to be in the area. The narrator observes and records information about the human population while looking for Gurb. Additionally, the narrator explores Barcelona with a vigilant eye. This allows the reader to experience sites which are visited from the perspective of a true outsider, one who does not know the ways of Barcelona. The narrator’s reactions to the city of Barcelona illustrate the unique aspects of the different iconic places that he visits in search of his friend Gurb. These places include the Sagrada Familia, Montjuïc, Parc de la Ciutadella, and Las Ramblas.

The narrator writes of visiting Las Ramblas as a thunderstorm approaches, referring to the weather as an “electrical storm” (Mendoza 1990: 31). He also visits the Sagrada Familia “singing to the top of our voices” with Jesus, the owner of a Chinese restaurant (Mendoza 1990: 104).  While there is not an extensive explanation or record of his visit to the Sagrada Familia, it is clear that the narrator utilizes it as a tourist destination and not as a place of worship, as it was originally meant. This relates to the fact that the vast majority of the church’s funding comes from tourism, and that those who are not involved with the church are known to visit as often as those who are.  On day twenty-two, the narrator visits the Parc de la Ciutadella (Mendoza 1990: 129), where he buys sweets and feeds them to the ducks in the park after deciding to spend the day there.

Mendoza’s No Word From Gurb is an example of a science fiction work which satirizes post-Franco Spain from the point of view of an outsider. Various other works, such as “(De)constructing Cultural Identity in Sin Noticias de Gurb” (Oxford 2004), “Self and Other in SF: Alien Encounter” (Malmgren 1993) and “Science Fiction in Spain: A Sociological Perspective” (Santoro Domingo 2006) help to dissect the deeper meanings of the work by Mendoza. These works together contribute to the relationship between science fiction, Spain, and its readers.

Pablo Santoro Domingo’s work, “Science Fiction in Spain: A Sociological Perspective,” brings to light the use of science fiction in the country of Spain. The scholar notes that modern science fiction was not abundant in Spain until the 1950s (2006: 318) and focuses on science fiction’s “exclusion from the fields of ‘legitimate’ literature” (2006: 315). Even though science fiction has grown significantly since the time of Franco, “it is still impossible for a Spanish author to earn a living as an SF writer” (Santoro Domingo 2006: 322). This may explain why science fiction works, especially satirical ones like No Word From Gurb, are few and far between. Santoro Domingo also highlights the social character of science fiction in Spain, as opposed to hard science fiction emphasizing technology.

As Oxford emphasizes, the theme of No Word From Gurb revolves around the idea that “Spain is basically shabby and second-rate as far as countries go” (2004: 75). He writes that the novel brings attention to social problems in Spain by way of parody of the science fiction subgenre, noting that all of the Spanish aspects of the story are “satirical in nature” (2004: 81). The satire included in the novel is a play on Spanish culture after Francisco Franco’s rule. This satire can been seen in the actions of the Spanish as well as the interactions between them and the narrator. Additionally, it is demonstrated in his visits of the various popular sites in Barcelona.

When the narrator lands in Barcelona, the city is in an unorganized and chaotic state due to the coming Olympic Games. Gurb remarks in an early diary entry on the urban and rural landscapes surrounding Barcelona, “The cities are jumbled and irrational in design, but the countryside around them is even worse. Nothing there is straight or flat, as if deliberately made to prevent proper exploitation (Mendoza 1990: 17).

Short entries in the book depict the routine nature of urban crime: “10.01 A group of adolescents armed with knives steals my saddlebag,” and others where he even has the clothes off his back stolen (Mendoza 1990: 17).The examples of disorganization and rampant crime in the city are intended to be a satire for Spain during that time period and perhaps meant to extend to include other developing cities all over the World (Oxford 2004: 76). He generally notes the disorder and high crime of the town while commenting on all sorts of behaviors of the inhabitants of Barcelona from the celebration dinner he has after opening his bank account to children who are just getting out of school (Mendoza 1990: 27, 74).

There are also other takeaways from the novel that were probably not accidental on Mendoza’s part. In the novel, the narrator flies in on his spaceship and disguises it as an apartment in a dense part of town to “avoid discovery or inspection by the autochthonous fauna”. His first day is all meant to “not attract attention” but he finds it difficult due to the “high concentration of people” and many types of vehicles at the busy intersection of Diagonal-Paseo de Gracia (Mendoza 1990: 8-9). This shows that there was little regulation of housing and organization was poor especially in the more urban parts of the city and that there was not much focus on preserving the architecture of this part of the city since an alien could make a spaceship pass for a family apartment (Oxford 2004: 82).

It is interesting that Mendoza chose science fiction as the genre to portray his observations about Barcelona in the early 1990s. Understanding the subgenre of science fiction helps to better understand the meaning behind No Word From Gurb. To better understand a specific place, one can learn a lot from science fiction literature as it sheds light on the dynamics of human behavior from the eyes of an alien, a being that is discovering humans for the first time ever. The idea is that readers can learn quite a bit about humans that they probably have not ever given much thought to, almost as if they, too, are discovering humans for the first time. Carl Malmgren’s article “Self and Other in SF: Alien Encounter”describes science fiction with a plethora of knowledge and suggests that readers will approach the narrator of No Word From Gurb and his co-pilot as an anthropocentric alien. This type of alien, Gregory Benford, an acclaimed critic and author notes, “serves primarily as a ‘mirror’ for us, "a way to examine our problems in a different light” (Malmgren 1993: 17). Malmgren continues to describe science fiction literature, specifically that pertaining to aliens or invasion. He states that aliens in an encounter are one of two categories, raman or varelse (Malmgren 2016: 19). The main difference that separates the two types of aliens is that the varelse cannot communicate while the raman can. The narrator of No Word From Gurb is a raman alien, as represented by his interactions with human. They are the type of alien who understood humans and were willing to coexist with them. For this reason, the narrator was able to spend over 20 days in Barcelona, experiencing as well as coexisting with the people in the city. Had he and Gurb been ‘varelse’, the novel probably would not have taken place at all as with the ‘varelse,’ it is always war (Malmgren 1993).

By showing the city through an alien’s eyes, Mendoza is actually opening the eyes of the citizens of Barcelona to the state of their city. In his article about how readers perceive different alien encounters in science fiction, Malmgren says, “In general, the reader recuperates this type of fiction by comparing human and alien entities, trying to understand what it means to be human” (1993: 15). Alien encounters also can show how different roles are played in a society by different people. Because of the shape-shifting nature of the narrator, we were able to see how several different people in Barcelona were expected to act. Gurb only actually transforms twice himself. Once into a university professor and once into a famous singer, Marta Sánchez (Madonna in the English translation). Though both characters are attempting to stay undetected, only the narrator is looking for Gurb and because of this he has to transform himself into several different people. (Oxford 2004: 81).

The narrator’s transformations show various people in Barcelona and how each of them have power and/or popularity in different ways. The very first person he transforms into is the Count-Duke of Olivares who campaigned for “centralization of the Spanish throne.” He does this out of superiority to Gurb feeling that he should be an important human since he was an important alien. However, he finds that this does not keep bad things from happening to him as he is robbed of his clothes by some kids and arrested for public nudity. When in jail, he transforms himself into José Ortega y Gasset who was a well-known philosopher in Spain—which made the judge release him citing that he didn’t wish to “complicate his own life” (Oxford 2004: 81).

The narrator’s time in jail shows another example of how homeless people felt during this time in Barcelona's history. Many people were being displaced by the Olympics and there was a lot of poverty in the city. While in his jail cell, the narrator befriends a homeless man and transforms him into Unamuno so he can be freed as well. However, his friend still requested to be changed back into his former form because he said that nobody would give him money looking the way he did after the transformation. As it is in many cities struggling with a homeless population, this scene validates the feelings of many citizens that homeless people do not really wish to exit their situation and become productive members of society but would be happy to “live on the public dole” (Oxford 2004: 83). The relationship between more affluent Barcelonians with those stricken with poverty is shown when the narrator transforms into Gary Cooper. While in this form, the narrator traverses one of the poor parts of the city of Barcelona. Here, he sees first-hand how differently the poor population is treated in relation to the affluent population.

As Oxford notes in his paper analyzing No Word from Gurb, “The rich receive preferential treatment while the poor are guilty until proven innocent and receive all sorts of abuse and mistreatment -even at the hands of their compatriots in penury” (Oxford 2004: 82). This again alludes to what type of problems all developing cities and countries face in dealing with large populations. The way the lowest in society are treated and the disparities in a community can be an interesting measure to the effectiveness of a government to lead a city or country into an urban transformation.

Other than just seeing what it was like to be human, the reader of this novel would see what it was like to navigate what could be described as the disorganization that was Barcelona in preparation for the 1992 Olympic Games. Barcelona is a city quite unique from many others, full of landmarks and beautiful architecture strewn throughout. In spite of modernization, and perhaps due to it, there is still a noticeable divide in the city, between the rich and the poor. The most notable comparison can be made between the San Cosme neighborhood where the poor people reside (Mendoza 1990: 18), and the more elegant neighborhood where the rich are housed, the Pedralbes neighborhood (Mendoza 1990: 24). The Pedralbes, quite distinct from the San Cosme neighborhood (also known as Barrio San Cosme), is a neighborhood located in the Les Corts district of Barcelona. Before the administrative division of 1984, the neighborhood was part of Sarrià and the former municipality of Sant Vicenç de Sarrià. Pedralbes is also home to The Lycée Français de Barcelone, a French international school. Furthermore, the daughter of one of Spain’s kings, Infanta Cristina of Spain, resided in Pedralbes for a few years. This sheds light on the stark differences between the aura in the richer parts of Barcelona versus the shabbier, impoverished areas.

As the novel is a satirical mockery of the state in which Barcelona was at the time, post-Franco regime and pre-Olympic Games, there were a number of underlying social issues that the author touched on from time to time, namely the stark differences in the lifestyle of the poor versus the lifestyle of the rich. The satire in No Word from Gurb “calls to attention a number of social problems in contemporary Spain” due mainly to the “globalization and transculturation that has occurred throughout Spain since that country’s return to democracy” (Oxford 2004: 76) and includes “commentary on the state of the post-Franco infrastructure renovations” (Oxford 2004: 80) that were occurring throughout the city. In addition, the narrator’s interactions with different people as he made his way through Barcelona began to make more sense as the “kinesic patterns and tonal volume [reflected] common stereotypical criticisms of Spaniards as loud and easily excited” (Oxford 2004: 80). Mendoza uses the scene about fecal matter in the water that the narrator drinks at one point as “commentary on both the traffic situation and the massive population of pigeons in many large Spanish cities” (Oxford 2004: 81), and that “[the] “tour” through [a] section of town provides ample opportunity for Mendoza to comment on the disparities between the rich and the poor.” (Oxford 2004: 82). These situations are a “criticism of post-Franco Spain and the influx of consumer capitalism” (Oxford 2004: 83). Barcelona was stuck between a rock and a hard place at the time when it was struggling to maintain its culture, all while in the midst of a transformation into modernism.

Similar to the way the narrator, T, and Gurb, wish to assimilate themselves into the Barcelonan culture and essentially become “natives” of the place, Spain, as a whole, wished to let go of what its identity had been in the past and adapt to the capitalistic consumerism that the rest of Europe was adopting. Part of Mendoza’s novel showcases for the reader this newfound obsession with consumer capitalism in Barcelona. The narrator finds himself attempting to open a bank account early in the book, what becomes and unexpectedly arduous task, and subsequently adds fourteen zeros to the end of his original 22 pesetas (Mendoza 1990: 26-27). After deciding that he would rather not celebrate alone at a seafood restaurant, the narrator subsequently goes on a random shopping spree buying everything from ties to a Maserati to fine wine. These sorts of touristic spending habits aligned with the goals of the city’s development of areas such as the Ramblas. As quickly as he determined that he wanted all these things however, he decided also that he was tired of them and “zaps” them all away so that he can proceed to walk down the Ramblas (Mendoza 1990: 28-29).

Overall, No Word from Gurb dissects some of the particulars and similarities of Barcelona in regards to other urban cities across the globe. The narrator makes frequent observations about the people in Barcelona that are broadly applicable and he begins to see the globalization of this urban city through the food. He finds that the food he eats that is “foreign” is actually not completely foreign but a mix between foreign and local cuisine used to please the locals. In urban cities around the World, this is a phenomenon that occurs time and time again without the knowledge of many who think they are getting authentic food (Oxford 2004: 84-86).

It brings generalizations of poverty, tourism, infrastructure, and the economy into a detailed view of the reader. Issues that may have otherwise been overlooked or misunderstood were clarified in a way that was both entertaining and informative. The book also reveals that there are cultural norms to be followed and that it matters a great deal who a person is when interacting with others. These cultural norms are especially important when Gurb encounters disparities in wealth and treatment of individuals as well as a contrast of different parts of town. By making the book entertaining as well, Mendoza could reach an audience of both people local and foreign to Barcelona to explain some of the things occurring in the city during this transformative time. In considering the novel in English translation for Anglophone readers, an important point is revealed: the meaning of a story can be changed in translation. For example, in the English edition of No Word From Gurb, the narrator takes the form of Madonna, rather than a Spanish celebrity to appeal to an American audience, and to help those in that audience to better understand the pop culture connections and allusions made in the original text removing some cultural meaning from the text. Nevertheless, in the end No Word From Gurb is a fascinating satire told through the eyes of Spanish science fiction that can be appreciated by readers across the globe.

—Edited by Benjamin Fraser with text from Andrew Lee,  Jayati Vyas and Ashley Weingartz