This thesis discusses the social, political, and historical panorama of the Spanish “state of exception” as depicted by the poets José Ángel Valente, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Leopoldo María Panero, and Manuel Rivas. The poetic works that have been examined in this thesis were all published between 1955 and 2009. The works present the horrors of the Spanish Civil War and the harsh conditions during the nearly forty-year dictatorship of Francisco Franco, in addition to the failed transition to democracy that began after his death. Through an incorporation of theories on nostalgia, trauma, “docile bodies”, and “empty signifiers”, this dissertation will analyze the exceptional literary space created by the minority genre that is Spanish poetry. Due to the censura, overt political discourse could not be carried out, and thus it was poetry, whose verses could abscond covert criticisms of the Franco regime, that created the opportunity for political dissidence at a time when it would be punishable by death. The poetic texts studied here expose the existence of Spain’s “state of exception” and insist on its continuity despite the fact that Spain is now a Constitutional Monarchy.
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