Eugenio García González de Nora made his most lasting contribution to the development of postwar Spanish poetry by reviving and adapting the practices of social realism from the 1930s to the situation of the Francisco Franco dictatorship. Despite harsh censorship of communication Nora found ways to publish poems of political protest by utilizing magazines with small circulations and, in the case of Pueblo cautivo (Captive People, 1946), with anonymous and clandestine publication. Committed to making others aware of the injustice and oppression of dictatorship, Nora championed the view that literature and historical reality are inextricably related and therefore that the course of events may be influenced by literary creation.

Assiduous readers of Spanish poetry became acquainted with these ideas in Nora's work as early as 1945 with the publication of Cantos al destino (1941-1945) (Songs to Destiny). Other readers encountered his work in the widely discussed...