Carmen Conde and her experience in Melilla (1914-1920). A literary proposal to work on interculturality in the classroom of Spanish Language and Literature in ESO and Bachillerato

Abstract

This paper is divided into two parts. In the first, we will examine Carmen Conde's memoirs Empezando la vida. Memorias de una infancia en Marruecos 1914-1920 (1955). In this work, the woman writer remembers the five years she lived in the city of Melilla, from the age of 7 to 12, decisive years in her human and intellectual formation. During those years in Melilla, the foundations and guidelines of what would become her character were established, determined by the influence exerted on her by her environment, at such a transcendental time in anyone's life as childhood. In fact, the author considered that it was precisely in Melilla where her vocation as a writer was awakened. In the second part of this work, we propose the use of these memoirs by Carmen Conde in the Spanish literature classroom to encourage students to develop a decentralised attitude and aptitude towards ethnocentrism. An argument that demonstrates, once again, the practical usefulness of literature as opposed to the usual consideration that condemns it to theorising with no direct relation to the everyday events that affect us as a society.