Around 1955 a good number of writers seem to have found their way into social realism. This is a  literature of emergency designed to produce a  transformation in the world. Poetry is conceived as a weapon aiming to bring about a more positive future, with authors such as Otero or Celaya reaching out to a  majority audience, with a clear and precise language. In the field of prose,  two key works, La colmena of Camilo José Cela, and El camino of Miguel Delibes, give shape to the realistic novel. They will be followed by a prolific genration of authors such as Goytisolo, Sánchez Ferlosio, Ignacio Aldecoa, Ana María Matute, and Fernández Sánchez, among the most relevant. As for the theater, the main theorist is Alfonso Sastre, who in his book Drama y sociedad advocates for a theater of testimony and denunciation. Buero Vallejo also stands out, with more refined techniques, although quite a few of his theatrical works ever reached the stage,  either for commercial or for censorship reasons, which gave rise to an underground theater. 

As a common thread in all areas, Spain is the obsessive theme and solidarity is a keyword to understand this literary spirit that appeals to literature as a transforming instrument of the world. For all social realism writers, the novel must play a role of testimony or denunciation of social miseries and injustices. Hence, the most frequent themes are harsh environments, such as the exhausting labor of the life of the countryside, the inhuman condition of industrial work, and the lack of solidarity of the bourgeoisie with the working class, an evocation to the past Civil War. The prevalent style is simple and direct, some authors aspiring to simple objectivism, while others in favor of a more committed attitude. In general, the language adopts the style of a journalistic chronicle, stripped of formal virtuosity, dialogues reflecting the living speech of different social strata.

Social Realism

Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio writes El Jarama, the postwar Spanish novel that became the highest representative of social realism in literature.

Carmen Martín Gaite writes Entre visillos,  a novel of circumstance where the boredom and emptiness of the people of a small city  impose their conformist atmosphere on the attempts of renewal of a recently arrived German teacher

Luis Guytisolo writes Las afueras, novel that in seven episodes narrates the tense relations between owners and employees in the environment of Barcelona and the rural surroundings.

Luis Martín-Santos writes Tiempo de silencio, a novel about a medical student, violently confronted by the severe conditions of the inhabitants of the marginal neighborhoods of Madrid.

Miguel Delibes writes Cinco horas con Mario, novel in the form of a theatrical work in which the shrewd criticism and continuous reproaches of a woman who watches over her dead husband reveal the poverty of values ​​of the time.

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