The Path to Ambiguous Monstrosity: Illness, Martyrdom, and Castration in Emili Teixidor’s 2003 Novel and Agustí Villaronga’s Eponymous 2010 Film Pa negre (Black Bread)

The chapter on Pa negre investigates illness, martyrdom, and castration in Emili Teixidor’s 2003 novel and Agustí Villaronga’s eponymous 2010 film. Within the context of nationalized Catholicism and racial politics that purges the “degeneration” by “regeneration” of the race, Teixidor’s coming-of-age novel transforms Catholic martyrs into representations of multiple marginalizations through which the protagonist ambiguates his self-identified “monstrosity.” The castration in the film and morbid tales of martyrs in the novel become the lens through which Andreu imagines the persecution of homosexuals and physical repression of political prisoners. This chapter traces the trajectory that leads to the inevitability of the protagonist’s self-loathing and acceptance of a stable future in an inhospitable world where he cannot accept himself.