Nada

Disintegration and failed expectations shape the reader’s experience of Nada, suggesting the magnitude of change felt by Andrea’s family after the Spanish Civil War. Her family’s trauma’s goes back to inciting events and economic struggles that began during the war. For example, Román’s spying for the “Reds” has led to his black market smuggling. Much of her family’s present hardship comes from wartime struggles. For instance, her grandmother had to sell half the apartment so the family had money to live on after her husband’s death.

Because Andrea’s memories of Barcelona and Calle de Aribau come from childhood visits long before the war, she is uniquely capable of appreciating the difference between the early days when “the world was optimistic” (11) and the eerie, unkempt home environment she encounters upon her arrival. After her own romantic anticipation of what Barcelona will be like is dashed by the stark reality of her family’s life there, so Andrea imagines how much the Calle de Aribau apartment has changed since her grandmother first arrived with her grandfather, full of similar youthful hope and excitement. She notably links the landscape of Calle de Aribau, “which was just beginning to take shape,” with the “long, difficult history of their love […] perhaps something connected to the loss of a fortune” (11). Laforet thus suggests that the evolution of Andrea’s family household—and, by extension, Barcelona’s landscape—can be likened to the dissolution of a “long, difficult” (11) love affair.

This theme of failed romance plays out in the secret affair of Angustias and Don Jerónimo; the love triangle between Juan, Gloria, and Román; the relationships between Román and Ena’s mother, and, later, Román and Ena; as well as Andrea’s own underwhelming encounters with Gerardo and Pons. All of these relationships end in failure, unable to survive in a tumultuous post-war atmosphere, let alone live up to the grand expectations of Nada’s characters.

For Andrea, romantic opportunities are often possibilities for escape from her dire material circumstances—both of her suitors are from wealthy families. However, her first kiss with the entitled Gerardo is uncomfortable, while the dance party Pons invites her to does not live up to the Cinderella story she imagines it will be, and instead makes her feel self-conscious and shabbily dressed. Andrea leaves both potential relationships with a feeling of disillusionment and dissatisfaction.

Other relationships also crumble. Anxious about her family’s reputation and the gossip of other families on Calle de Aribau, Angustias chooses to enter a convent rather than run away with Don Jerónimo. After sharing rosy stories of her early infatuations with both Juan and Román, Gloria’s marriage disintegrates into a nightmare of violent abuse that feels impossible to flee, though she repeatedly contemplates leaving. In both relationships, a full escape seems necessary for survival but is ultimately impossible. Ena attempts to avenge her mother’s troubled history with Román but feels dismayed by the outcome. The relationship’s end has even more drastic consequences for Román, driving him to commit suicide.

The prevailing sentiment throughout Nada is that life and love do not live up to the lofty narratives its characters weave. Near the end of the novel, Andrea reflects on a pivotal encounter between Gloria and Juan, musing that a novel or movie would end their story on this note: “If on that night […] the world had ended or one of them had died, their story would have been completely closed and beautiful, like a circle” (206). However, in real life, there is no neat ending to a story arc; instead, “everything goes on, turns gray, is ruined in the living. There is no end to our story until death comes and the body decays” (206). Through the novel’s title, Laforet hints that romantic relationships carry no meaning (“nada”)—at least, no meaning that can be reconciled with one’s original grand expectations.