The Stein Report is one of those short books that's about more than it seems at first glance. The title, punning on the reports that are written about school students that so very rarely tell you anything about the human beings to whom they refer, introduces the central character, Guillermo Stein, who makes his presence felt from the moment he arrives at the school.

Guillermo Stein came to the school in the middle of the year, arriving on a bicycle. None of us came to school by bicycle.

Guillermo Stein's bicycle was an Italian bicycle, black in colour and very high. You would hardly have seen him over his bicycle, this newcomer Stein, if he hadn't been wearing a red rain cape over his shoulders, tied at the neck, off which the raindrops slid onto the ground. Because that was the year it rained all it ever could, when it didn't stop raining throughout the school year. That was why none of us came to school by bicycles. Beneath the line of umbrellas we saw Guillermo Stein arrive: we saw his back sheathed in that red cape and, beside the lamp on the rear mud guard, a white oval plate with two black letters —CD—and a coat of arms with a Latin motto and unicorns and fleurs-de-lys. Guillermo Stein had come to school on a bicycle that belonged to the diplomatic corps of a nation whose coat of arms did not appear in the atlas. (p.9)

What is that coat of arms which does not appear in the atlas, and why is it sufficiently important to be on the first page of a story set in the era of Francoist Spain? (We can date the story from a reference on p.98 to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968).

From what I can see at Wikipedia, I think the coat-of-arms is this one, the arms of the Spanish monarch between 1924 and 1931. It's not the coat-of-arms of the short-lived Spanish republic (1931-1938), nor is it the coat-of-arms of Francoist Spain (1938-1977). No, these arms referred to by the narrator are the arms of Alfonso XIII, the Spanish king who acquiesced to the military dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923-1930). Alfonso bunked off to exile in 1931 when he realised that the monarchy was just as unpopular as the dictator, and—having watched from afar as Spain tore itself apart in the Civil War, (1936-1939) renounced his claim to the throne in 1941. And while his two eldest sons renounced their claim as well, the third son Juan did not. And so... this school student Guillermo Stein not only has connections with a possible restoration of the monarchy, but is not afraid to show it.

A little later, there's a reference to exploring the jungles of that nation whose coat of arms did not appear in the atlas. This is a reference to the Rif War (in Morocco, 1920-1927) with which Alfonso was closely associated. Constitutional monarchs are supposed to keep out of politics, but Alfonso supported the Africanists who fancied a new empire in Africa to compensate for the possessions they'd lost in the Americas and Asia. They were opposed by the abandonistas who wanted to abandon Morocco as not worth the cost in lives. The point being that Spain was deeply divided, not only by these issues but by stark inequities and the right-wing conservatism of the Catholic church. But Llop is also alluding to the denial of Spain's history under Franco: even the atlas is in denial about what is, in the 1960s, recent history. And that alerts the reader to the question of how it is that a teenage schoolboy is able to recognise that contentious coat-of-arms.

The answer is, in his grandfather's home, where there are old photos, magazines and books.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/03/19/the-stein-report-by-jose-carlos-llop-transla... ( )