March 22, 2026

"There are no living heroes." Why Javier Cercas's cult novel "Soldiers of Salamis" about the Spanish Civil War is worth reading

Javier Cercas's novel "Soldiers of Salamis" was published in 2001 and achieved great success. Susan Sontag, Mario Vargas Llosa, and John M. Coetzee gave it complimentary reviews. The work, about the Civil War, its instigators, and freedom fighters who were so easily forgotten after their defeat, is considered to have helped overcome the "pact of silence" surrounding the victims of Franco's regime (1939–1975). Two of Cercas's books were published in Russia in the 2000s and 2010s, but his most famous work remained untranslated. In recent years, the need for "Soldiers of Salamis" in Russian has become obvious – Ivan Limbakh Publishing House has finally corrected this omission. Against the backdrop of current news about attempts by Russian authorities to recruit students for the front, Cercas's novel suddenly acquires a new, frightening dimension: after all, it is written precisely about the nature of the myth of heroism and its cynical exploitation. Our literary critic Sorin Brut explains why it is important to read this book right now. Writer Javier Cercas during the presentation of the anniversary edition of his novel "Soldiers of Salamis" in Madrid, Spain, February 26, 2026. Photo: Borja Sanchez-Trillo / EPA.Once a journalist dreaming of writing, a middle-aged Javier Cercas (only partially matching the author) accidentally learns a striking story from the Spanish Civil War. One of its instigators and leaders of the ultra-right "Phalanx" (the precursor party to Franco's regime), the poet Rafael Sánchez Mazas, managed to survive in the final days of the conflict. The Republicans had already been pushed by the Francoists to the border with France and were counting on nothing but a hasty emigration. But the captured opponents were decided to be executed. In the chaos of a mass execution, Sánchez Mazas slipped into the forest, and the Republicans rushed in pursuit. One of them found the prisoner, trembling with fear, but spared him: he shouted to his comrades that he had not seen the fugitive. Sánchez Mazas survived the war and died many years later. This incident does not let go of the journalist Cercas: he thinks that it contains a meaning important for modern Spain, and begins his own investigation, which soon turns into the idea for a book. The first part of the novel is structured as an "archaeological" detective story. " In the hope of understanding the motivations of Sánchez Mazas and his enemy-savior, the journalist rummages through archives, finds witnesses to the poet's fateful days or their relatives. Each episode provides fragments of information, but each leads to the next clue. Humor adds charm to the narrative: it is the journalist's self-irony and outrageous characters – above all, his new lover, the passionate and bold TV fortune-teller Conchita. She supports Cercas in his second attempt to approach literature, but seems to understand very vaguely what he is doing. Tatiana Pigareva, the author of the introductory article to "Soldiers of Salamis," writes that Conchita is a metaphor for the generation of young Spaniards at the end of the 20th century, who perceived the Civil War as an event from the distant past that had no relation to them. Hence the ironically detached intonation of the first part and the reference to an episode from ancient Greek history: it never occurred to the journalist that some participants of the Civil War were still alive, "as if it happened not sixty years ago, but in times as distant as the Battle of Salamis" (i.e., in 480 BC). Cercas writes not so much about the war itself, but about the excavation of a painful past that descendants preferred to forget. The idea of the danger of sweeping this under the rug has been heard everywhere online in recent years. The idea that the past continues to live in the present, largely determining the lenses through which we view it, is hardly surprising today. Writer Javier Cercas against the backdrop of the cover of the novel "Soldiers of Salamis," Madrid, Spain, February 26, 2026. Photo: Borja Sanchez-Trillo / EPA.The thought, repeated again and again in the novel (the author loves refrains), that memories are a way to preserve the lives of people who have passed away, and forgetfulness means their final death, also does not sound new. But even such worn-out ideas do not make the novel boring: it's all about the structure. The second part is written differently: in fact, this is the journalist's work about Sánchez Mazas. The evidence has been gathered – the interpretation is next. Cercas combines the information already known to the reader with new information, and the text turns into a critical biography of an "educated, refined, melancholic man of conservative views, devoid of physical prowess and intolerant of violence (primarily, probably, because he himself was incapable of committing it)," who for many years "methodically, more diligently than anyone else, did everything to turn his country into a bloodbath." In the third and final part, the journalist discovers that the book is a failure. But a new twist occurs – and the main character is no longer Sánchez Mazas, but a Republican soldier. It seems he could have been the very soldier who spared the enemy caught in the forest. If the journalist manages to find him, he might answer the main question of the investigation. The intonation of the narrative also changes with the hero. Irony almost disappears. Now Cercas is not just serious, but at times even sublimely sentimental. "Wars... are fought for money, that is, for power, but young people go to the front, kill, and die for words, that is, for poetry." Sánchez Mazas was precisely the author of such poetic propaganda, nostalgic for traditional values and the times of condottieri and poets. And what about today? Utter degradation, godlessness, and barbarian rule of the people are about to reign. Who will save "civilization" if not an armed detachment of young heroes? Cercas says that, in addition to memory, the idea of heroism interested him in the novel. Its connection with machismo and patriarchal attitudes, usually dear to conservatives, is quite obvious. "Today, patriarchy is most often criticized from the perspective of harm to women. But war is a vivid testimony to its destructiveness for men as well. Hostages of traditional views on masculinity are particularly vulnerable to manipulation. Sánchez Mazas's propaganda offered them an illusion of strength, significance, and meaning through belonging to something larger: the Motherland and history. "Do you think anyone thanked me? And I'll tell you: no one. Not once in my life has anyone said "thank you" to me for laying down my youth for your damned country," says one of the characters. The entire novel is permeated with disappointment in the attitude towards veterans. Returning from the front, he expects respect, to be perceived as a hero, but they see him as just a person. "Heroes become heroes only if they die. Real heroes are born in war and die in war. There are no living heroes," this line shows the interconnection of heroism and death. "Man" and "hero" are from different worlds. And the thirst for heroism is an attempt to transcend the human and, at the same time, an escape from one's natural vulnerability. Propaganda likes to exploit fears, and the fear of being oneself is among the first. If heroism is used, it is already evidence of contempt for man as such. Another refrain of the novel is a conversation about an unnamed quality: "Something that lives within the mind with the same blind persistence as blood runs through the veins, and the planet moves in an inevitable orbit, and all beings exist in the form they are in, and do not want to exist in another." This "something" pushes a guard soldier during a walk of prisoners to suddenly start dancing, singing "Sighs of Spain" and hugging his rifle like a woman. Externally, this quality manifests as compassion and mercy; internally, as vitality, poorly compatible with the need to sacrifice life and take the lives of others. Sánchez Mazas himself was not eager to go into the thick of things, and when he was on the verge of death, he did not behave very heroically. For a propagandist, "values" are not a requirement for oneself – only for others. He himself agrees to occupy only a privileged position and is certainly not ready to take any vulnerable position. Propaganda in this sense is "disinformation against the enemy," directed at one's own. The writer not only criticizes the militaristic concept of heroism but also constructs an alternative – vital heroism, without the poeticization of death and rejection of humanity. This task is echoed by the choice of an epigraph from Hesiod's "Works and Days" – an epic that exalts peaceful life and labor. But the construction gains full momentum in the final part of the novel, where the focus is on the story of a person "who had courage and an innate sense of good, and he never made a mistake – at least, he didn't make a mistake at the moment when it was exactly necessary not to make a mistake." The idea of preserving predecessors in memory is a continuation of the same vitality and struggle against the devaluation of personality. The deceased are a vulnerable group. Neglecting them reflects neglect of the living. The emergence of metamodern features (sentimentality, pathos) closer to the finale emphasizes the book's idea: Cercas cannot afford, like a fascist propagandist, to defend his values from hiding. He abandons protective detachment, sheds the armor of irony, and meets the reader not as the Author, but as himself.