Книга "La Colmena". There are reasons to believe that Camilo Jose Cela knew perfectly well what he was doing as he wrote, between 1945 and 1950, "La colmena", a novel that would counterweight the positive image the Franco regime was striving to build. In his foreword to the first edition Cela justifies and describes his text as a "pale reflection ... a humble shadow of the daily, harsh, deep and painful reality." His portrait of a sad and desperate Madrid immediately drew the attention of the censors: the novel was banned in Spain until 1955, four years after its first edition was released in [link] idea of portraying the daily Madrid reality constitutes the very essence of "La colmena" and, quite paradoxically, gives the text its universal reach. In the first place "La colmena" is a novel with no main character or plot in a traditional sense: a host of characters (more than three hundred between real and fictitious) and sub-plots, run along the streets in this intricate work. Its u...