"Not All Decisions Made in the Novel Are Meant to Be Explained Later"

Blessed sun and blessed views. To the skyline of the city of Alicante and its port, where the reader is led at the end of her novel. María Dueñas, a prominent author of contemporary fiction, has presented her latest work 'In Case One Day I Return' (Planeta, 2025) in the city - surprised by its light and climate after weeks of rain - a gesture that revives the "unknown" memory for many of the 'pied-noir'.

The author has landed in Alicante with her novel, freshly printed and placed in bookstores, just as her protagonist does at the end of its pages. The city is not a setting as such; in fact, the story "does not take place" in 'la terreta', but 'In Case One Day I Return' does hint that Cecilia Belmonte returns to the peninsula through this port.

The new work by María Dueñas focuses "on the opposite shore", in the city of Oran during its French era of the early 20th century, which served as a "destination for Spaniards leaving a challenging Spain with few future opportunities". The sea was the medium through which they embarked on a new life, via steamships that offered "constant traffic".

In this way, the writer constructs a new literary universe within her bibliography, alongside Cecilia, a character who, after experiencing a violent moment, completely changes her identity - never coming to know her real name and surname - while fleeing to Algeria "hastily" after being raped in her own home. On this matter, María Dueñas points out that "not all decisions made in the novel are meant to be explained later".

She "has much and little to do with other characters", like Sira Quiroga from 'The Time in Between' or 'The Captain's Daughters'. The latter emigrated due to "life's adversities" without any suspicion, and always accompanied; situations contrary to those of this new protagonist, whose life unfolded "in misery".

Moreover, due to the times in which 'In Case One Day I Return' is set, Cecilia Belmonte experiences other episodes that also affected, for example, Sira Quiroga, such as the Spanish Civil War, which she lives in Oran "from a distance". Another conflict coexisting in the era is the Second World War, decades before the one that most affects the protagonist, the Algerian War of Independence, which caused "the exodus to the Spanish coasts and the port of Alicante to forge a new future".

The story of the 'pied-noir' has not arrived by chance in the life and pen of María Dueñas. "I know of the existence of Spaniards in Oran through many connections," she confesses. Some of them may sound familiar from her previous novels, related to Spanish or French Morocco. "It's a passage I knew without delving into" and in it, she found "unknown and close material" ideal for turning into narrative.

In this way, she has woven multiple plots and layers into the life of Cecilia Belmonte, protagonist of 'In Case One Day We Return', thus offering a novel with the perspective of the Iberian Peninsula, as "the southeast, this corner of the map, is linked to the opposite shore" and "there was a time when there were more Spaniards there than French and Arabs". Therefore, María Dueñas emphasizes that "it was worth rescuing" this passage from 60 years ago.

In order to recreate the settings, the first element the author uses to begin writing the novel, María Dueñas traveled to the current city of Oran. "It's different," compared to its Spanish and French periods, from which she has found various remnants of infrastructure and architecture. However, regarding the culture "there is nothing left of that society" just as there are no longer the neighborhoods that the Spaniards built on its outskirts, which "are now gone and are Arab".

Nevertheless, 'In Case One Day We Return' recaptures all this essence portrayed by that population that was forced to return to Spain. It does so from the perspective of women, in an era when "they were constantly subject to abuse". This is reflected in the various stages of Cecilia Belmonte, one who "finds herself in the position of leaving her entire world behind" and returns to her homeland, through the port of Alicante, "as a mature woman with much life ahead".