Diktaturmänniskans fall
Bilden av Spanien i Per Wahlöös texter 1951-1962
Per Wahlöö is one of Sweden´s most famous crime writers. Together with Maj Sjöwall he revolutionized the swedish crime novel in the mid-sixties with the Martin Beck-series. Before that he was working as a reporter in the fifties and started writing novels about the oppression of man, power and totalitarian mentality in the end of the decade. Those novels (1959-1968) are called ?The dictatorship?-series. This paper has focused on his contemporary writings about Spain where Wahlöö lived for a couple of years in the mid-fifties. How did the fascist Franco regime take place in his writings between the years 1951 to 1962? The material investigated is both journalism articles and fictional writings with the two novels The Wind and the Rain (1961) and The Lorry (1962) as the prime motives. This paper shows that the dictatorship of general Franco is quite invisible in Wahlöö´s early writings. On the other hand it takes almost the entire thematic space in the novels from the sixties. Per Wahlöö´s ideological agenda is also moving from being rather bleak and invisible in the 1951-articles to be more concerned with the class discrimination and fascist oppression in the later pieces. Spain is also an interesting paradox with it´s exploding tourist industry in the fifties and sixties while the ruthless fascist government still controlls the poor people in the country. The relationship between the individual man and the overall social structure is also something that Wahlöö is writing about. The dictatorship-man in Wahlöös novels is someone who is programmed by a fascist structure which in turn creates their own antithesis; the (socialist) dissident, an anti-heroe who´s only way out is armed rebellion proclaimed by an awokened class conscousness.