El juego entre realidad y ficción literaria en Niebla de Miguel de Unamuno

In most works of Miguel de Unamuno and other members of the Generation of 98 it is easy to find hints to recurring common themes. Among them, the meaningfulness of the artist’s literary background, the urgency in discovering the sense implied by the words “being Spanish” and the impellent necessity of opening the Spanish cultural panorama to a more european perspective without forgetting the legacy of Spanish tradition. In one of his most known works, Niebla (1914), Unamuno faces the problem of Spanishness by placing himself within the plot of the novel and conversing with one of the characters, his alter ego Augusto Pérez. What turns out from the episode is a dramatic dialogue in which the significance of what Unamuno intends to be his “ser español” is tragically overwhelmed by a dreamy atmosphere soon developing into a nightmare. In such an ambiguous context, both the author and the fictional character lose their self-confidence. They rapidly transform themselves into weak human beings thus showing the flimsiness of human beliefs and a clear inability to understand what real life is. In this way, Unamuno reproposes to contemporary readers a familiar topic within the Spanish literary tradition.